Public Art Weaving

When talent abounds. He's a musician, cabinet maker, and now a builder of outdoor looms. She's a weaver. Discovered on a walk of the neighborhood this week, an invitation to "weave", or as the tag attached to the loom beckons, "Please Play". A bucket of materials sits at the base of the loom.  Warping and weaving, public art at its best.

McChesney Gal-leg Spurs

Gal-leg spurs, made by the McChesney Company around 1900. Uncle Frog, married to my Aunt Mary, gave me those spurs a couple of years before he died in 2000. 

I had spied them hanging from the rafters of their garage in the greater Spring Branch area of Houston. When I asked about them, he replied, “Do you want them?” Did I want them! OMG.

The spurs had come from his father, Henry Clay Todd, who grew up in Grimes County Texas. I had not thought of Frog (William Woodrow) or his family having any connection to horseback riding or cattle or ranching, but that just shows how little we know of the past. They were city folks, as far as I knew. I’m no blood kin to the Todds, but no greater treasure could have come from my own family. 

I’ve been thinking about those spurs lately. I’d love to have them here with me in New Mexico, but it makes no sense. They’re in Texas, hanging from the horn of a trophy saddle from the 1952 Texas Cowboy Reunion, made by the Olsen-Stelzer Saddle Company in Henrietta, Texas. Again,  that saddle is not a part of my blood heritage. Just something that I’ve acquired along the way. This is how history is kept alive.