Marie in Mud

For the first time in its nine-year history the Allied Arts show of Dallas, Tex. fortnight ago admitted to its annual competition a piece of sculpture by a Negro. Last week a jury, including San Antonio's wintering Artist Henry Lee McFee, awarded it first prize. The sculptor: Thurmond Townsend, 26, a $9.40-a-week bus boy in the Talk of the Town, an eating place on Dallas' Main Street. Sculptor Townsend never tried modeling until one day a few months ago, when the mud in his back yard suddenly looked malleable and inviting. He fooled around, did busts of Washington and Lincoln from pictures, but he could not fix the ears right. On his way home from work he dropped in at the Dallas Art Institute, asked Instructor Harry Lee Gibson how ears were done. On Instructor Gibson's advice, Sculptor Townsend did his next modeling from life --a bust of his pretty wife, Marie--and submitted it for the Dallas exhibition. Because sculpture in Dallas mud soon crumbles away, Instructor Gibson last week made a cast of the prizewinning bust, presented it to the sculptor for his living room.

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