Doris Park and her husband Stephen Maxon with a clay mold of their Herbert Hoover statue in 2017. Photo by Sam McIntosh

A local artist’s life will be celebrated this week.

Seventy-two year-old Doris Park of Wellman, co-founder of Max-Cast, a fine arts foundry in Kalona, died Friday July 6th at the University of Iowa Hospital. Park was born in Victoria, Texas, and studied at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where she resided for many years before moving to Iowa in 1988. Park enjoyed drawing, painting, and sculpture since early childhood and joined her husband Stephen Maxon in running Max-Cast in Kalona.

KCII News spoke with Park in 2017 about casting a bronze statue of President Herbert Hoover for his birthplace of West Branch, “There’s a lot that goes into creating a likeness to say nothing of an expression. You can’t just copy a picture anytime really because it’s a 3-D thing. So I try to find pictures of both sides of his head, a good profile. I like to have a picture of each of his ears because people’s ears are really kind of different, and I like to look for pictures of his hands and things like that.”

Park was a member of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy and the Washington County Soil and Water Commission, and was active in the Washington County Democrats and the Friends of Bunker Mill Bridge. A celebration of life service will be held Thursday at 10 a.m. at the Peterseim Funeral Home in Kalona with burial to follow at the Wellman Mennonite Cemetery. Visitation is from 5-7 p.m. Wednesday at the Peterseim Funeral Home.