“Whistler’s Aunt”
Estell and his “Bee-keeper.” |
Two hundred some years and many miles from the German laboratory
Mary Shelley depicted in her gothic novel about Victor Frankenstein
and his monster, New Mexico State University alumnus and sculptor
Greg Estell pieces together recycled parts to form his own
“Frankensteinish” creations. Unlike Shelley’s
fictional creator, Estell takes pleasure in watching the figures
he constructs from industrial, agricultural and automotive
machine parts emerge into life, a portion of the process he
calls the “wow step.”
Just as these sculptures come to life for their creator,
they reinvigorate the metal parts of which they are made,
allowing viewers to re-examine what they might otherwise consider
obsolete or broken—in a word, junk. The delight Estell
takes in such material is evident when he discusses his art,
frequently mentioning specific parts, such as the silencing
springs from brake drums that have served as birds’ tongues.
In fact, many of Estell’s sculptures have been inspired
by particular parts he encountered. “I can rarely walk
through my piles of materials without finding something that’s
interesting, that stirs an idea,” he said.
“Bee-Keeper” is an example of a sculpture originating
from a single part—in its case, a sewing machine’s
pedal that reminded Estell of honeycomb. This sculpture exhibits
another key quality of Estell’s work, namely its wit,
as illustrated in the letter B’s that buzz around the
Keeper in the wind. Humor is important to Estell, who said,
“I think everyone’s taking everything too seriously.”
He views his art as offering an antidote to that mindset.
Despite Estell’s refusal to take his work too seriously,
each piece requires weeks to create. The hairs on “Whistler’s
Aunt,” a sculpture that plays on James Whistler’s
famous portrait of his mother, took him more than a week because
each strand needed to be individually welded.
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“Have a Nut” |
Estell’s sculpting career began when he was given a welder
for a high school graduation present. Although he didn’t study
art during his tenure at New Mexico State, he did sculpt while earning
his B.A. in animal science (1980) and M.A. in agriculture (1985).
His brothers Dave ’72 and Redge ’78 also received bachelor’s
degrees from the university and his mother, Marge Estell ’67
’73, who retired from the College of Education, earned both
a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the university.
After receiving his M.A., Estell moved from Las Cruces, where he
was raised, to Albuquerque to manage a cattle ranch. Currently he
fits in his sculpting between his parttime work as a ranch hand
and his role as a father to two teenagers. The ranch provides him
the space to spread out his large collection of parts, which he
gets from auto salvage and wrecking yards. In recent years, people
have begun leaving materials for him, often anonymously. “People,”
he said, “like the idea of their junk being recycled into art.”
Estell’s sculptures, including “Bee- Keeper” and
“Whistler’s Aunt,” can be seen at the Art is OK Gallery
in Albuquerque.
Jenn Habel
Ray Lankford leans against the mural outside Foster Hall.
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When Ray Lankford ’38 came to then New Mexico A&M
College in the fall of 1930, the agriculture student earned
his tuition money by gathering eggs and cleaning hen houses
for the poultry department.
“I slept in the upstairs of the poultry department laboratory,”
he said. “The rats were very, very thick there. The professor
had three dogs in the room to keep the rats off me at night.”
But it was while he was working for the dairy department
a few years later that Lankford became a symbol of the agricultural
heritage of the university— his work feeding, milking
and tending to the cows immortalized in the colors of a mural.
“The dairy boys got after Professor Cunningham that
there should be some mural or something on campus showing
the department,” Lankford said. He was chosen as the
department’s model for the mural, which was painted on
Foster Hall in 1936.
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Lankford said he posed for three or four days while Olive Rush,
an artist from Santa Fe, sketched him. “It was the hardest
25 cents an hour I ever earned,” he said. “She made me
stand up straight, and I had a milk pail in each hand to balance
myself while she was doing her work.”
The university’s fresco was one of many murals being painted
across the country as part of the Federal Art Project of Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA
was created during the Depression as a massive employment relief
program. The arts project was one of the main cultural programs
of the time and employed thousands of artists in endeavors such
as mural-painting in schools, libraries and other public places.
Rush, who was 63 years old at the time she created the fresco,
was best known for her paintings and sketches of Native American
women and children. Her Foster Hall mural is a colorful depiction
of farm life and Native American symbols painted on the northern
entrance of the building. The mural was covered by paint over the
years, but was restored at the direction of former university president
James E. Halligan in 1983.
Lankford, now 92 years old and living in Mesilla Park, can be seen
on the west side of the mural, holding his two milk pails, forever
a young man of 26.
Sarah Wheeler
Heather Feldman