pengwen
01-23-2006, 06:14 PM
By Ben Moffett
© Ben Moffett
Reprinted by permission at SONewMex.com
Albuquerque sculptor Reynaldo (Sonny) Rivera's work seems to get better and better. I interviewed him recently for more than an hour at the new Oñate exhibit in the Albuquerque Museum's sculpture garden and got the inside skinny on some of the little things he does to add realism and historical accuracy to his work.
For example, Rivera sculpted in a broken strap on the ox cart (or carreta) harness, and sunk one wheel in the earth to show the struggle that travelers along El Camino Real endured.
The 30-piece, 100-foot long, three-tiered garden is mostly his work, although some of the pieces were sculpted by Albuquerque artist Betty Sabo. Nora Naranjo-Norse also participated in the design.
The lengths that Rivera went to be historically accurate included researching and selecting the kind of cattle that existed in that time period. His selection: longhorns, the direct descendants and closest relatives of the feral cattle of the Southwest and Mexico.
So he visited Fritz and Rebecca Moeller's longhorn ranch at San Acacia and selected Bubba, the Moeller longhorn bull that has sired more prize-winning offspring than you can shake a stick at, as his model.
Today, Bubba, or at least his likeness has been turned into bronze at the sculpture garden. Unfortunately, Bubba probably wouldn't approve of the changes made to his anatomy. The magnificent bull is playing the part of an ox pulling a carreta up a ridge. For historical accuracy, his most magnificent parts have been left on the cutting room floor. His long horns have been curved inward and he has been (gasp!) neutered..
Not neutered in real life, mind you. The Moellers want it known right up front that Bubba remains a proud and productive sire, whose offspring are shown by other longhorn ranchers at the State Fair and other venues each year.. But Rivera says his historical advisers convinced him to revise Bubba's anatomy to make the sculpture true to the depicted time period.
“If there are cows around, a bull pulling a carreta will want to smell the roses,” said Rivera.
There's little doubt that it would be hard to made a bull concentrate on carreta pulling were a romantic female bovine in the vicinity. And there are cows in the exhibit, just ahead of the carreta, also modeled after Moeller's Cross M longhorns. But historians have mixed views about whether the oxen on El Camino Real were neutered or not.
Historian Marc Simmons said he's not so sure how they operated on El Camino Real, but there are references to “bull whips” and “bullwhackers” on the Santa Fe Trail, and he believes bulls pulled freight wagons on that route.
Another carreta and oxen sculpture, the much smaller El Camino Real Heritage Center's exhibit south of San Antonio, clearly consists of two bulls.
Did the travelers care more about having well-mannered oxen, or were they more concerned with bringing DNA diversity into New Mexico?
Regardless of how he is depicted, Bubba is going to be around for thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands unless he is melted down in a new bronze age after a societal collapse.
And so will the Moellers be long recognized. Their Cross M brand is clearly marked on Bubba and two or three of the cows.
And all the animals are shown in their best form. Movement is a key in the entourage of people and animals that follow Oñate and his Indian guide, and nowhere is it better exhibited than with Bubba's muscles straining to pull the cart out of an apparently muddy quagmire.
Meanwhile the Cross M cows up ahead, are struggling, too, one partly down, and a mounted drover, “Bonito,” Rivera's self portrait, herding them forward.
At the front of the sculpture (and the trail) stands Oñate and his Indian guide, plotting the trail, their eyes locked on the same place out near the horizon.
Rivera made multiple trips to the Moeller ranch, measured the animals, and actually created preliminary molds on the spot out of foam. When Bubba's likeness left the ranch, it still looked like a bull, Moeller said.
But Rivera, properly, based on his research, made the critical cut before the bronze was cast..
© Ben Moffett
Reprinted by permission at SONewMex.com
Albuquerque sculptor Reynaldo (Sonny) Rivera's work seems to get better and better. I interviewed him recently for more than an hour at the new Oñate exhibit in the Albuquerque Museum's sculpture garden and got the inside skinny on some of the little things he does to add realism and historical accuracy to his work.
For example, Rivera sculpted in a broken strap on the ox cart (or carreta) harness, and sunk one wheel in the earth to show the struggle that travelers along El Camino Real endured.
The 30-piece, 100-foot long, three-tiered garden is mostly his work, although some of the pieces were sculpted by Albuquerque artist Betty Sabo. Nora Naranjo-Norse also participated in the design.
The lengths that Rivera went to be historically accurate included researching and selecting the kind of cattle that existed in that time period. His selection: longhorns, the direct descendants and closest relatives of the feral cattle of the Southwest and Mexico.
So he visited Fritz and Rebecca Moeller's longhorn ranch at San Acacia and selected Bubba, the Moeller longhorn bull that has sired more prize-winning offspring than you can shake a stick at, as his model.
Today, Bubba, or at least his likeness has been turned into bronze at the sculpture garden. Unfortunately, Bubba probably wouldn't approve of the changes made to his anatomy. The magnificent bull is playing the part of an ox pulling a carreta up a ridge. For historical accuracy, his most magnificent parts have been left on the cutting room floor. His long horns have been curved inward and he has been (gasp!) neutered..
Not neutered in real life, mind you. The Moellers want it known right up front that Bubba remains a proud and productive sire, whose offspring are shown by other longhorn ranchers at the State Fair and other venues each year.. But Rivera says his historical advisers convinced him to revise Bubba's anatomy to make the sculpture true to the depicted time period.
“If there are cows around, a bull pulling a carreta will want to smell the roses,” said Rivera.
There's little doubt that it would be hard to made a bull concentrate on carreta pulling were a romantic female bovine in the vicinity. And there are cows in the exhibit, just ahead of the carreta, also modeled after Moeller's Cross M longhorns. But historians have mixed views about whether the oxen on El Camino Real were neutered or not.
Historian Marc Simmons said he's not so sure how they operated on El Camino Real, but there are references to “bull whips” and “bullwhackers” on the Santa Fe Trail, and he believes bulls pulled freight wagons on that route.
Another carreta and oxen sculpture, the much smaller El Camino Real Heritage Center's exhibit south of San Antonio, clearly consists of two bulls.
Did the travelers care more about having well-mannered oxen, or were they more concerned with bringing DNA diversity into New Mexico?
Regardless of how he is depicted, Bubba is going to be around for thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands unless he is melted down in a new bronze age after a societal collapse.
And so will the Moellers be long recognized. Their Cross M brand is clearly marked on Bubba and two or three of the cows.
And all the animals are shown in their best form. Movement is a key in the entourage of people and animals that follow Oñate and his Indian guide, and nowhere is it better exhibited than with Bubba's muscles straining to pull the cart out of an apparently muddy quagmire.
Meanwhile the Cross M cows up ahead, are struggling, too, one partly down, and a mounted drover, “Bonito,” Rivera's self portrait, herding them forward.
At the front of the sculpture (and the trail) stands Oñate and his Indian guide, plotting the trail, their eyes locked on the same place out near the horizon.
Rivera made multiple trips to the Moeller ranch, measured the animals, and actually created preliminary molds on the spot out of foam. When Bubba's likeness left the ranch, it still looked like a bull, Moeller said.
But Rivera, properly, based on his research, made the critical cut before the bronze was cast..