Wildflowers make way for art

AUSTIN (KXAN) - According to the experts at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, all signs point to a robust wildflower season in Central Texas this year.

Plentiful rains alternating with sunny days provide the perfect mixture for huge swaths of color across the landscape. At the Wildflower Center, itself, though, nature's bounty is making room for the works of humankind.

"I've got the football players, 'Leather Helmets and Broken Noses,'" said Austin sculptor Bob Coffee, gesturing toward a statue over his shoulder in the center of the wildflower garden. "Now how that relates to nature, I'm not sure. They're running through wildflowers."

The statue depicts a football player running at full speed, carrying along with him, a tackler who is hanging on to the runner's leg.

"It honors a man named Lloyd Madden that in 1939, scored 141 points in eight games," Coffee said. "And that stood until Ricky Williams broke that in what, 2000, 2002, 60 years, Gee Whiz, that guy was a real racehorse."

Coffee's piece is not alone. Scattered throughout the property are 39 other pieces of sculpture, including an enormous dragonfly hanging on the side of high limestone wall. There's also a longhorn steer named, "Little Beev," fashioned by East Texas sculptor Terry Jones, from wrenches, metal files and old gun parts.

"Here's a big shotgun barrel, parts of pistols," Coffee said. "I was asking him about that and he says that he dismantles guns for his police department in the city where he lives. So he gets to keep the parts and put them in his sculpture."

Another Jones piece is a large bright red spider, accompanied by long black legs created from bent rebar.

"We had a scorpion last year," said Wildflower Center Horticulture Director Andrea DeLong-Amaya. "Kids could climb up on it and get their picture taken with it, and there were lots of screams, 'Oooh! A scorpion!' And so I'm imagining the spider will be a similar reaction."

With wildflowers of every imaginable shape and color about to burst forth upon the grounds of the center, why does the institution go to such great lengths to import art?

"I don't think we need it, but it's always something that adds to it," said DeLong-Amaya. "And I have to say, too, in the slower months like in January and even in the middle of summer, it's kind of nice to have some sculpture in the gardens," she laughed.

For the sculptors, there is an equal reward. Coffee, who serves as president of the Texas Society of Sculptors, said it is not enough to just produce art.

"It will sit in your yard until you get it out in front of somebody," he said. "You need to be showing; you need to be entering competitions, you know, get out and get your stuff, get it in front of people, you know. This is a perfect place for it.

The sculpture show will run through the end of June.