Postcards From Milan

It’s the quonset hut with the wood frame front that might grab your eye first. It sits next to an unassuming house on a quiet street in the Village of Milan. But if you slow down long enough you might notice that the metal structures that fill the yard are not heaps of scrap metal but are in fact thoughtfully crafted sculptures that might feel familiar if you look beyond the raw power and impenetrable strength of these geometrical shapes welded together by a man who started with poetry. “I have no idea how that happened,” Robert Gallegos said in his quonset hut studio on a cold, snowy day. “I didn’t know a whole lot about poetry, but I thought ‘I can do that’.”

The poetry began in the early seventies when Gallegos, now 70, was a college student at Eastern New Mexico University. He majored in sociology and psychology. His poetry first began as a way to communicate with a girlfriend. He’d write poetry to her. “There were no poetry classes at my school. The poetry just evolved into its own thing. If I thought I had an insight, I’d write it down.” As his poetry evolved, so did his exploration of other art forms.

“Someone gave me a wood carving kit in the mid-seventies,” he said as we sat in his studio next to his home. At the time he was thinking about performance art, and he wanted to create his own props, so he carved a series of wooden skeletons. “They look really alive, sort of a sci-fi thing,” he said. He would use these carved wooden skeletons for his poetry readings. They would be on the stage next to him, creating a secondary audience. “This gave me two audiences. The people audience and the wooden skeleton audience. I just let my imagination go,” he said. “I found artist friends. I hadn’t taken any art classes or writing classes.”

Gallegos isn’t just an artist holed up in a quonset hut in Milan. His education in sociology and psychology complemented his work as a juvenile probation officer for the State of New Mexico, a position he held for twenty-five years. “I would bring my art work into the office. If a young person responded to it, I might tap into that so that we could break the mold of the standard questions that have to be asked,” he said. “I’m a poet, sculptor, and was a probation officer,” he said.

As he worked on building his own props for performance art that he had considered doing, he began learning how to weld. “I started working with metal. The whole thing started with poetry then the carvings and then the welding,” he said. Gallegos said he does not approach art with any preconceived ideas. “Sometimes I just kick metal together. It’s like poetry and sculpting are very much alike. With metal I work with the shape of it. I may have to cut it. With poetry there’s something I’ve seen. I take it and place it with something that may be related to it or not. It’s a juxtaposition of words.”

Gallegos’s early life began in Colorado where his father worked in a series of different mining towns. They arrived in Grants, New Mexico when he was a freshman in high school. “My dad was a miner all his life,” he said. Gallegos began working in the uranium mines each summer after high school to pay for college. “These Aspen logs made the support beams called stults. There were so many of them for safety. It was like working in an underground forest. It made such an impression.” He said that he didn’t really know his father until he began working in the mines himself. “The working class minerhow they spoke, how working in the mines affected their lives. It’s physically demanding. There’s an element of danger. I wanted to write about this,” he said.

Gallegos believes that creativity must be fed, not necessarily in formal schooling but in experiencing the world. “I like to go to galleries and visit other artists. There’s just so much out there. A play, a poetry reading, it all has an impact. Anything can inspire…mountains, cities, trailer courts,” he said. Unlike some formally trained artists who may leave art school and surround themselves in what can be a very cloistered elitist art world, Gallegos has been blessed with an expansive vision that allowed him to be inspired to create art while maintaining his commitment to the real world struggles of young juvenile offenders. “I worked in the mines, worked as a probation officer, worked at Double Six Art Gallery, and even did odd jobs for the state like fighting forest fires. Art is my passion, and it’s important to continually keep your mind going.”

In reflecting on how art and his past probation work intersected, he said, “Everybody has to grow. The child you’re dealing with will become an adult. I put myself in their shoes, but mostly it’s getting them to grow. You try to do the best you can. Just like with art.” To experience some of his beautiful metal work, drive slowly down Milan Street. You Can’t miss it. If you’re in Grants, stop by the Double Six Gallery and be greeted by his work in the parking lot.