A Day in the Life of one Artist

etched glass design for Rail Runner passenger station Paseo del Norte/Journal Center

This is one of six images for a Rail Runner passenger station in north Albuquerque.  I developed all the images, fifty four, for this project from digital photos I took in the neighborhoods of each station.  I met with representatives from each of the nine communities the commuter rail serves.  For this particular station, community representatives suggested cotton wood trees, which flank the Rio Grande river, water, horses and vinyards (a subject already taken by another community.)  I went with the cotton wood trunks, working close to get texture.  I had to make sure the image did not completely obscure the view through the glass for saftey reasons.  No hiding places.  I made each image of two or more digital photos to simplify the final image and add continuity to all six images.  In the photo below, white areas will be etched and black areas left clear.  The full scale image will be about 36″ high.  The length is about7′ 4″, which makes the tree trunk life size.  Three heavy vertical supports are behind the vertical etched areas.  (Hurricane force winds occur here.  Gusts to 40 or 50 miles per hour are fairly common, particularly in spring.) A metal bench covers the lower portion of the windscreen where there is an adobe texture etched on the glass (not shown.)  The windscreen-posts-bench configuration was a design given as was the medium of glass etching.

 Yesterday I went up to Etchmaster (www.etchmaster.com) to see the first completed windscreen panel for the New Mexico Rail Runner commuter rail service (www.nmrailrunner.com/).  The Mid Region Council of Governments of New Mexico commissioned me to create fifty four designs to be etched on the windscreen (windbreak) panels for all nine passenger platforms.  There are six panels at each station.  Each panel is 5″ x 7″4′.  Norm Dobbins of Etchmaster had made a sample etching of part of one panel last January, but this was the first whole panel.  I’ll post one of the panel designs later.

 Etchmaster is located in the boonies a few miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  There is a “movie” ranch nearby that hosts movie productions.  In the distance I passed what looked like an old courthouse where there had only been juniper and sparse grass before.  Near the road a movie crew had built a replica of the Mineshaft Cafe in Madrid, surrounded the place with old motorcylces, then burned it to the gound, cycles and all.  When I went on to Madrid, the place was jammed with movie production crews.  The old ball park looked like an Interstate 40 truck stop with all the parked trailers for the movie crew.  Now I knew why the Madrid Summer Blues Festival had been moved to St. John’s College in Santa Fe.  Banners over the two lane road through Madird declared, “Madrid Chile Festival” ,and the movie company had gussied up the decaying town for the benefit of whatever future film will feature the “Madrid Chile Festival in Madrid County.”  There is neither a real Madrid Chile Festival nor a Madrid County. (Pronounced MA’ drid.)  My gallery is at the south end of town, free of movie props, but not free of maligant movie effects.  Mel and Diana, my dealers, were not happy.  The movie production has made the whole town, a popular tourist attraction, nearly inaccesible to that cash spending breed.  No sales.  Diana is on the town council.  She understood the movie crew was to be in town only five weeks.  They had been there six weeks and the end was not in sight.