I get nostalgic for time and places that I’ve never been part of when I see a train. 

A huge part of what made industrialization as widespread as it became in the United States was the intricate network of trains that spider webbed the country. As it turns out, Albuquerque was a vital part of keeping the elements of that system going solidly. I learned this on my visit to Albuquerque, while sitting in a massive, glorious raw industrial building of full glass windows, where trains used to be brought to life.

I seek out “beautiful nerds” wherever I go. When you find such a nerd, you should figure out what they’re into and listen. Even if you feel your eyes glaze over and the cognitive overload starts to make your head hurt, push through it. You won’t absorb everything, but you can learn a lot from the stories of people who have deep knowledge about whatever it is they’re passionate about. I usually find them in maker communities, out social dancing, at conferences, or at a circus arts gym. 

And so, I stumbled upon a few of these wonderful souls at the Quelab makerspace in Albuquerque.

My mission this year is to make big. crazy. art. I have no idea how I’m going to do this or what exactly I’ll make, but I’ve always found that if you go boldy in a direction, the universe will bend with you. 

After an email or a facebook message – I don’t remember which, Rebecca welcomed me with open virtual arms to the Wednesday Weekly call. I listened through the voicing of typical makerspace concerns – the solving of problems, how post-covid reopening was going. Members and team leaders voiced individual concerns around safety and talked about what projects folks were wanting to take on next.

I asked to have a tour of the space the following evening, and Rebecca excitedly obliged. The tour melted into conversation about strategy and workshops and planning and how the space got things done. We talked about our experiences of being female leaders in a male-dominated space – the good, the bad, the everything. I went home feeling as though maybe there was a little hope and that maker communities were still a good thing. The maker community I used to help run had left me feeling devastated after the loss of two members. It has been difficult to cope with and constantly on my mind for the last few years, to say the least. 

I came back the following Saturday to volunteer to help Rebecca out a little. It’s a hell of a lot of work to help run a makerspace. Makers are weird and wonderful, but a makerspace is a constantly-spewing volcano of creative and social chaos. 

What did she need help with? Sometimes it’s easier to tackle tasks like organizing a room when you have someone by your side to chat and work with. I know that after a few years of being out of the makerspace scene entirely, I missed the creative energy and just hangin’ out. The sewing room was her responsibility. I’d helped organize a sewing room in the past, so I started wiping things and rolling up fabric. 

When we finished up, Rebecca asked if I’d any plans for Sunday. She asked if her partner, Adric could come along.

As far as I was concerned, the more nerds the merrier.

So we met at Quelab on Sunday and decided to take the scenic route to the market.

The “scenic route” included sculpture. If Big. Crazy. Art. was the mission, Adric was making sure we hit the target. Two enormous robots stood along the sidewalk beside a tatoo parlor. They were real-life Transformers, and they were brilliantly assembled. Families were stopping by the sculptures to get group photos and selifes with the pieces.

It’s a magical thing when a bunch of old car parts can bring people that much joy. 

And we kept on. We ended up at The Rail Yards. It felt like spring after a long year of COVID winter. The artisans and food vendors had come out and decorated the grounds of a massive glass-and-steel building that once upon a time was a space where trains were born. It was being converted into an event space, and it was often rented out for photo shoots. 

The work that was done in these spaces was difficult and dangerous. This sacred place made multi-ton beasts out of poured iron. The cars and engines they made built a nation and brought people from coast to coast.

Progress – right? Progress is good, we’re told. Progress is savvy at business and makes deals. It’s cutthroat and competitive. It’s exhausting.

The same rigorous “progress” that built the rail empire brought its demise. Progress doesn’t have a sense of right and wrong and progress will destroy itself if not kept in check. 

The art market felt so friendly, slow, and safe. This past year, human interaction felt anything *but* safe. For me, the last 15 months were a year of bombings and tornadoes, hiding out away from a virus, episodes of anxiety and feeling almost hopelessly isolated and alone at home. A little joy, some art, and some friends were very welcomed.

The space was so impressively large that the experience of being in it was almost religious. The room was welcomingly bright and open. 

Adric offered stories of sneaking onto the railyard grounds in his younger years, stealing photos and exploring. He knew so much about the buildings and how the whole site functioned. There were local groups dedicated to rail car and engine restoration – and they were just starting to get back to building. Rail was a major part of the history that shaped Albuquerque. All I could think was that I needed to read whatever I could find about it. This skeleton of a space was only a soft echo of what it used to be.

I left that day with treasures. For my friend who had lost her partner and not found another, I picked out a copper foil origami crane. She folded a thousand for him before he left this earth. I think of her every time I see a paper crane because our apartment was covered in them. For my friends who I was house sitting for, I picked up red and green chili sauce. (When in New Mexico, do as the natives do and slather everything with chili sauce, I’m told.) I got myself some glass bead jewelry strung by Native American artists. The slightly sad irony that the “indian beads” that comprised it had come from a craft store wasn’t lost on me.

We left as the market was getting ready to close with aguas frescas in hand. I had quite a bit to get ready for my next adventure, travel to Mexico to visit a friend on his newly acquired sailboat.

Where do all the artists hide? In their natural environment they thrive, but publicly they can be quite difficult to spot, as they tend toward being an introverted sort. 

My friend Ennie and I found quite a few sculptures along the way to Albuquerque – and we jumped out of the car to take a look at just about every one we passed. However, I came to this place with the feeling that I’d love to learn and perhaps get my hands messy if I could. Seeing sculptures wasn’t enough, I wanted to meet the people who made them. 

We were headed out for the day. Along the road was a funky welded horse sculpture that we’d missed the night before on our drive in. I turned into the driveway and we got out to get a close-up look, cameras in hand.

I’m working on becoming the sort of person who takes their time on the journey, and I’m thankful to have had a friend along who was excited to do the same. 

This horse stood in front of a plaza where there was a small cafe, a gallery and a few other businesses. The Wild Hearts gallery has some phenomenal pieces inside. We wandered around for a bit and I grabbed a card to send back to my mother. Geri, the gallery manager, was excited to learn that I wanted to go hang out with and maybe get to work with some of the local artists.  

Within a day of the visit, she’d messaged several local metal artists and had given me tips on where to find their work online. She said one of her favorites sculpted bike chains. I tried to wrap my head around what that could look like, but honestly I couldn’t imagine what was possible with such an odd material.

Ennie flew back home a few days later – and I worked, worked, worked – and looked in awe at the birdbath out the window as the desert drank and preened themselves.

And then Stephen emailed me.

His emails were thoughtful and warm. And it turned out that his space wasn’t too long of a drive from where we were staying. I called him up and planned a late-morning Saturday visit, so that he could get a bike ride in that morning. Bike chains. Huh.

Steven’s work was not in the gallery. He didn’t have a web site. He was an artist that may have suffered more through the pandemic were it not for the fact that he was retired psychologist and he had let his roots in Placitas run deep.

Stephen built his studio with his own two hands and built it well. He was an excellent craftsman and admirably, self-taught. I drove the gravel roads that day, in my tiny little car that had no business being in the mountains or desert, to a little oasis that simply felt magical. The yard, in the middle of the hilly desert terrain, was a lush garden of flowering trees and succulent plants. Interspersed among the plants were bright colored glass totems, figures, metal torsos and lamps; evidence of an unending creative drive.

I wandered around the grounds with him and he told me stories about his work. First up were the lamps. I immediately noticed them, as a good friend of mine in Nashville had a similar fascination with geodesic shapes and had worked on a metal lamp with me. They were a little clunky and a little wild. The surfaces of each side were made of fused bicycle chains. The sculptures were motorized and would spin, they recharged by solar power, and some of them had colored glass incorporated into the sides.

I marveled at one of the torsos hanging in his garden. He said that always wanted to work with the human body, so his bike chain experimentation led him to figure out a new process. He created a plaster negative from mannequins and torso castings and delicately placed and tacked, placed and tacked, placed and tacked sections of bike chains along the interior of it until the piece suited him. 

The glass work wasn’t his. His partner was equally phenomenal. All of the glass work was hers. I didn’t get to meet Elaine, but I would gladly travel back just to hear her talk about all of the bright, whimsical glasswork she’d made. 

He showed me walls that he and Elaine had collaborated on, and my heart melted. He had taken heavy squared grating used to sort gravel (which there was PLENTY of in the desert) and built decorative walls in various places in his garden. His partner made hundreds of funky little glass tiles, all of which were hung inside of the individual squares. He drilled the holes in all the glass for her and wired the piece together.

My heart skipped a beat when he told me they’d worked together on it. 

Finding someone in life who matches and compliments your energy, steals your heart, and helps you make something beautiful is a form of love that is rare and wonderful. Some couples get by never knowing or caring what the other is passionate about – but the ones I adore create together. I love watching my partnered friends who are artists go about life, whether they’re experimental filmmakers, mead makers, sculptors, or photographers. To be an artist in love with another artist means that your sensitive heart always has a source of inspiration. You’ve got a spirit alongside you who wants to find beauty and take time to celebrate or feel what others would just pass by. 

I hope to meet Elaine soon. 

We kept on the tour – he asked me if I’d like to see his workshop.

Now you have to understand, I have developed a thing for domes. The friend who had invited me on this journey to Albuquerque had convinced me five years prior, to build a planetarium. I had no idea what I was doing, but managed to wrangle together the local maker community and eek out a 20′ projection dome that barely worked. That experience led me down a path of collecting, building and learning about the dome community and how planetarium projection systems worked. (Someday I will write several lengthy posts about this – what you need to know at this point is that I love LOVE domes.)

And wouldn’t you know it. Stephen HAD A DOME.

Not only did he have a dome, his dome was his workshop. I’d seen a few of the torsos here and there in the yard – but MY GOODNESS – here were all his works in progress. On the workbench was the tiny little tool he used to disassemble the chain and the solvent he used to painstakingly clean it. Because of COVID, he really hadn’t made much work in the last year, and so his work sat waiting for him to find a tiny little spark of motivation. Gallery tours had stopped and dried up. People just weren’t wanting to spend on art, and there wasn’t much opportunity to get it out in front of folks unless he went online. His works aren’t done much justice online – you don’t get the sense of the form.

He talked about powder coating – how pricey it was, but how stunning the works turned out when he did. He had one of his torsos done in blue and it was magnificent.

His favorite figure – well, he calls “butt” erfly. (And to be fair, that torso indeed has a respectable derrière.) He has spent weeks of his life looking for mannequins that have dynamic gestures – and his searching has led him to the conclusion that a good torso is a very difficult and often expensive thing to find. 

After awhile we head to his showroom. Here, his figures take on an entirely other form. He had been tinkering with brass and bronze and tin, melting down bits and bobs – shell casings and other random things he’d find on his adventures and pouring them over the bike moulds. 

The effect was stunning. If this man has a masterwork, the torsos and castings of his face that have this second layer of melted elegance through it are absolutely it. 

He continues to show me pieces in his gallery. He shows me the fixtures he’s designed to suspend his torsos away from the wall, and the spinning luminescent globes he’s created. He ticks on some spotlights and adjusts them, creating dazzling effects behind the works. 

I ask about pricing, well knowing that I have no budget nor place to put a torso at the moment, and our discussion shifts. We talk about customers who ask how long it takes him to make a piece, as though they are trying to calculate an hourly rate. They want to see if his work is “worth it”.

I empathize.

When you are an artist, you aren’t an art factory. It turns out that there is a whole segment of folks who want to quantify a rate for a work that has taken a lifetime of experimentation, inspiration, work, and observation to produce. I feel really badly for what society has done to reduce individuals to thinking about the value of art in such cheap terms.

And he then tells me that regardless of what these sorts think, he’d never devalue his pieces by selling them cheaply. Since the pandemic started he hasn’t really been selling anything. He tells me his community has been hurting. Instead of taking in money to cover his labor and materials, he has decided that the food pantry down the hill could use the funds more than he. Once more I recognize that I am in the presence of a truly compassionate, wonderful human being. I would buy every piece he had if I had the means. And maybe someday I will. “But what can I do?” I think to myself – if he’s not in a position to promote himself at the moment, I’ll try my best and share his story so that maybe he can sell a few pieces.

What I really want to do is make him a few negatives. Commission some dancers and make him some forms so that he can build out even more spectacular shapes. Or maybe find a way to connect him with an arts group and a makerspace or someone who can collaborate with him to do this. 

My mind just goes on like that sometimes. And I suspect that I may not be able to actually do that sort of work for him, but I love the thought exercise. When you see someone doing good, what can you do to help them along? If you aren’t in a position to buy the art, how can you help them on their path? 

I left his studio humbled and in admiration, and thankful that my heart has been feeling awakened but happily introverted as of late. 

 

Learn more about Stephen Feher’s work:
https://www.wildheartsgallery-nm.com/stephen-feher.html
http://www.sandovalsignpost.com/mar16/html/featured_artist.html