Big Sky National Monument - Stonewall, TX

Lyndon Johnson is not a president often associated with the Antiquities Act. In his term, he enlarged four existing national monuments and established another two, most of which he did only at the behest of others. The exception to this is Big Sky National Monument. Set close to his ranch in Stonewall,Texas, Lyndon used to load VIPs into the back of his Lincoln Continental and go careening across the open prairies that would one day become the monument. He’s quoted saying that he loved seeing the faces of those unfamiliar with the Texas sky, crushed under the weight of it. And admittedly, there is something magical about the skies over the Lone Star State, something countless have commented upon. It’s in every song and story the state has to offer, the wide panorama of open sky that ensures storms can never sneak up on you, that teaches you from an early age how small you are in the world. It’s only fitting that a state obsessed with size would be blanketed by an equally big sky. Previ

The Martian Oak - Luling, TX

On the best of days, Luling is a town that reeks of gasoline. It is halfway enjoyable by car, if only because driving offers a buffer between you and the noxious atmosphere. Prepared in such a way, you can somewhat easily tour the town’s decorative pumpjacks, its football throwing quarterbacks, its leaping grasshoppers, its twirling dancers, and countless faded, tipping assortments. It is hard to imagine spending even a day in the town, yet there are those who have lived generations in its migraine-inducing air. You might easily understand why the town’s longtime residents, those born and raised in Luling, stay there, but it’s harder to understand why those who don’t move there of their own volition, lacking any preexisting ties to bind them there. Such is the case of Dewey Spooner.

For the first half of his career, Spooner was a sculptor based out of Philadelphia. Known for the grand proportions of his sculptures and installations, his work was most at home in open-air galleries and spaces, the parks and plazas that litter the metropolitan buzz. He was an artist who seemed well suited for New York, and many thought the Big Apple would be the setting for the next phase of his career. Yet, in 2005, he Spooner instead moved to Luling and established an artist’s colony and retreat there, inviting the entire art world to inhabit and visit the small town.

The colony hosts a public gallery and sculpture garden where the work of its members and seasonal attendees can be viewed. Foremost amongst these are Spooner’s own work, most notably Gravity’s Sapling, commonly referred to by the locals as The Martian Oak. The piece is an oak tree suspended by cable fifty feet in the air, artificially induced to grow downward. At night, when the cables are invisible and the tree is illuminated, one can easily believe that the whole thing is hovering of its own volition. This fact, along with the work’s strange base, contributed to the early misconception that the artwork was a UFO, a belief that some locals still grudgingly hold. Adding to this misconception is the questionable statistic that before the piece was installed Luling had had exactly two UFO sightings in 50 years. After the piece was erected, this number jumped to four or five sightings a week. Some more outlandish locals believe that Spooner’s colony is just a cover, and that he and his devotees holds strange otherworldly rituals to draw-in and communicate with lizard men from other dimensions. Maybe this, too, is just a byproduct of all of Luling’s gas fumes.

Practicalities:

The Luling Artist Colony Gallery and Garden is open Thursday through Sunday from 9AM to 5PM. Guided tours are available by reservation. 


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