Millard Malin, a native of Salt Lake City was one of Utah's most prominent sculptors. At the age of seventeen he'd fulfilled a L.D.S. mission to New Zealand, not knowing that he would return to that beautiful island some day as an artist; in 1912, he began art study at University of Utah. While at the U. of U., he met fellow student and future L.D.S. Church architect Edward O. Anderson, and those two became lifelong friends. He only studied at the U. of U. during the 1914-15 academic year. Malin quit school and went to work in order to earn the money to study art in New York City. Arriving in New York in 1917, he found employment with well-known sculptor Herman MacNeil while also attending art classes at the National Academy of Design. Then, back in Utah again in the mid-20s, Malin opened a Salt Lake City sculpture studio and contacted his old pal Edward Anderson. Those two were destined to work together several times: the first time on Malin's most important commission to date, The Sugarhouse Pioneer Monument (basic design by Anderson finished in 1930, located in Sugarhouse, Salt Lake County), and the second time was on sculpture for Mormon temples designed by the architect in Los Angeles, Switzerland, England, and New Zealand. Malin's sculpture is all essentially realist.

Biography courtesy Artists of Utah