Buy a salt block at a feed store and you might be out $10. But after an animal has licked it? Why, then it becomes modern art.
Salt blocks – those 50-pound cubes of salt offered to livestock and wildlife as a nutritional supplement – are the medium of choice at the annual Great Salt Lick Auction in Baker City. The art contest and fundraiser asks ranchers to collect the most artfully licked salt blocks from their pastures. The blocks are then sold at a charity auction for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars.
This year, the auction of 20 salty creations – featuring curves, grooves and holes carved by the tongues of cows, sheep and other animals – raised $14,030 for the Parkinson’s Center of Oregon.
“Ranchers, they get kind of marginalized for not having any sense of aesthetics,” said event creator Whit Deschner. “It just shows they can enjoy a nice sunset like everyone else.”
As the slogan once proclaimed, the Great Salt Lick aims to put the “culture” in agriculture.
Deschner got the idea for the event years ago while drinking wine outside his friend’s cabin. He noticed the salt block his friend had left outside for the deer.
“It was just fantastically sculpted,” Deschner recalled. “I said, ‘That looks like something that would go in front of a federal building for millions of dollars.’ And he agreed.”
Inspired, Deschner recruited fast-talking friend Mib Dailey to serve as auctioneer. Dailey was initially skeptical of the idea. Deschner is known as a writer, poet, photographer and – according to Dailey – “the local troublemaker.”
“I says, ‘Why in the hell would anybody want a used salt block?’” Dailey recalled. “He says, ‘Well, you know people will buy anything if you get them in the right mood.’ "
It also helps to have a good cause. Money raised from the Great Salt Lick Auction goes to the Parkinson’s Center at Oregon Health & Science University, where Deschner received treatment.
“I’ve had Parkinson’s for 22 years now,” Deschner said. “I’m doing really well. And I thought, well, I could do something about it and give them some money, and we’ve been fortunate to do so.”
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Deschner held the first auction in 2006 with an audience of only 40 people. When the first block sold for more than $100, he knew he’d hit on something special. The auction raised about $3,500 the first year, and it’s grown ever since. All told, the event has collected more than $160,000 for the Parkinson’s Center.
“This is a county of 16,000 people,” Deschner said. “That’s a heroic number to come up with.”
Salt blocks come in several colors, depending on the minerals they’re meant to provide animals. That means sculptures vary from white to green to shades of red.
The “artists” have ranged from cows to deer to horses to rabbits. The beauty of abstract art is in the eye of the beholder, but Deschner has his favorites.
“Goats, sheep, they do really intricate, realistic work,” he said. “Cows are more or less, they’re kind of impressionists. I like some of their stuff. The horses are just hopeless. They bite it.”
Sold blocks sometimes end up back outside, where they’re eventually worn away by the elements and wildlife. A few of them come back to be auctioned off for another year.
“I’ve seen one block come back three years in a row, a little smaller every time,” Deschner said.
Bidder Valerie Potter of Baker City is a longtime fan of the Great Salt Lick who’s taken several pieces home from the auction over the years.
“I usually share them with my horses, but it depends,” she said. “I have one that has a heart shape in it. It’s in my bedroom. It’s beautiful.”
Stephen Crowley and his partner Ellen Matthew try to come every year from Boise, Idaho.
“We came initially because it seemed curious and surprising, and we keep coming back because of the people,” he said. “Charity can feel like you take out your checkbook, and you write a check, and hopefully good things happen in the world. Mib and Whit make it personal.”
After a two-year pandemic hiatus, the Great Salt Lick Auction returned in September to the Churchill School in Baker City.
The highest price of the night came from a friendly bidding war between Potter and Matthew.
Matthew ultimately took home the salt sculpture – named ‘The Queens Crown’ for a passing resemblance to such – for the record sum of $2,900.
“I don’t know. It just hit a chord in people,” Deschner said of his event. “They keep coming back, so we must be doing something right. I was going to quit this year, but people kept bugging me.”
The Great Salt Lick is now an institution in Baker City. And though it started with a poke at what is considered modern sculpture, the town now has its own salt-inspired piece of outdoor art.
In 2014, Deschner received a $5,000 grant from the Ford Family Foundation to install an actual, four-foot bronze statue of a salt lick in downtown Baker City at the corner of Court Avenue and Resort Street.
“It’s almost embarrassing,” Deschner said of his legacy, “but yeah, I am proud of it.”
-- Samantha Swindler, sswindler@oregonian.com, @editorswindler
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