VALENTINE — Thirteen miles west of Valentine, sculptor Matthew Gray sets out on finishing his third sculpture to complete a trilogy of towering aluminum works, respectively titled Broken Mile, Dark Mile and Quartered Mile. As suggested by their names, each of the sculptures comprises 250, 253-inch-long pieces of aluminum equaling one mile in length.
When Gray first began conceptualizing the works, he began playing with concepts of distance, asking questions like, “How far is a mile? We think we know what that means out here, but do we, really?” Out in the middle of the desert, it’s hard to tell the difference between one, five or 20 miles. Vastness blurs the parameters of distance, and Gray’s project brings measurement an entirely new meaning.
Gray, who hails from Baltimore with a formal background in the arts, says that his previous experiences mountain climbing and working as a photographer for Patagonia inform his work on the structures. In a way, they’re more like a builder’s project — they’re tactile, grand in scale and require a drill. “This work is of the body, not just the mind. This is more athlete than artist, really,” he says. And it’s true — many studio artists couldn’t climb and drill together a mile’s worth of aluminum by the light of their car’s headlights at four in the morning to beat the day’s heat. Each structure contains approximately 10,000 pounds of aluminum.
The structures themselves cast gigantic, dystopic shadows across the desert floor, which, Gray reminds me more than once, used to be the bottom of the ocean. He is considerate of the land and its history; he takes into account the effect the sculptures will have on the local flora and fauna, ranchers, Border Patrol agents and nearby residents. “One of the first things I did was go and meet the ranchers who live and work here. This is their world, for generations … To exist in nature successfully is one of the experiments here.” He is considerate of his footprint, both literally and metaphorically. “Will I regret this one day?” he asks rhetorically, “maybe, I don’t know.” For some of my questions, Gray doesn’t pretend to have the answers, but that’s not to imply that he’s not thoughtful, only open to a profusion of possibility.
“For me, this is where the piece really begins,” he says, pulling off about a mile away from the site, the structures themselves still small, indecipherable objects glinting silver in the distance. Much of the experience of the work is about the anticipation — the knowing they’re out there but not being able to fully comprehend their scale yet. The journey to the massive works feels slow along the gravel road. It creates a spectacle.
No more than a few minutes after we arrive at Broken Mile, a Border Patrol agent pulls up behind us and parks his vehicle. “I wanted to come out and see what the inspiration was for these,” he says, “I thought maybe you were the guy that made them.” I get to experience firsthand the conversation that the project has sparked in the area. “When they first were built I thought they were vehicles coming, so I would drive over and be like, ‘Oh, that’s just the sculpture,’” Border Patrol Agent Perez says.
“It definitely captures the attention of a lot of people. I know you would think there’s not a lot of traffic out here, but every time that I’m assigned [to this area], people are coming out to see these. So now,” he starts smiling as he says this, “now we have more work.” Gray laughs and says he’ll buy him a beer to make up for it.
Knowing that Border Patrol agents were nearby while assembling the sculptures acted as a real comfort for Gray, who joked that he “could always crawl out to the road” if something went awry. Once, when his car wouldn’t start, an officer gave him a ride to his home in Marfa. Gray speaks conscientiously about the opinions of the officers and the harmony between the ranchers and their lands; he cares about their approval of the project. In other words, we can — and cannot — do things alone.
“The artist wants what’s barren … This isn’t the land of ornamentation. This is about survival,” Gray says. He wants the work to be honest and efficient. “Like, if you came out here and you saw me working, I’d be in a white tank top, maybe listening to Sepultura … just a guy with a drill.” He installs the sculptures entirely alone, from start to finish. This means from the early stages of dreaming up the sculptures, which began about five years ago from his hometown of Baltimore, to acquiring the land, ordering and picking up materials from El Paso, and assembling them to completion. He puts each piece of aluminum up one by one, favoring trial and error while climbing on the set pieces like a ladder or self-contained scaffolding. Concrete slabs hold the structures in place (about 20,000 pounds of concrete, in fact), with a few iron supports at their base. Gray says some of the materials he chose were inspired by what has lasted out in the West Texas desert for decades: windmills and fence posts, many of which are made of iron.
The feedback on the sculptures remains majorly positive. “Mostly they just applaud the effort,” he says. And the sculptures are nothing if not effortful. Each structure, Broken Mile (completed in 2023), Mile Dark (completed in 2024), and the not yet finished Quartered Mile (set to be complete by late 2024 or early 2025), is equal to one mile in material length, “Down to the inch,” Gray tells me, “which requires one of those 250 pieces to be cut a bit short.” There are no “correct” viewing points for the sculptures; they have no front or back, and lighting is dependent upon shifting, natural elements. Due to their scale and setting, the perception of the works is more dynamic than what you might experience in a gallery setting. “In painting, for example, you don’t have these sorts of bewildering, indiscernible distances,” Gray says.
The sculptures are certainly part of a series, but each has their own “tenor” — Mile Dark is significantly more boxed in than the earlier Broken Mile, which has a more fragmentary, expansive feeling. Mile Quartered is set to be built lower to the ground, its pieces strewn. I keep resisting the urge to anthropomorphize the sculptures, but it feels reasonable to do so. When I ask him, “Why three?” he says that “three is an opportunity to see there’s an exponential play with the concept … They start speaking to one another.”
“I want to keep [the work] consistent with what the landscape entails,” Gray says, which already proves inevitable. When we get to Mile Dark, a well-underway bird’s nest rests atop one of the aluminum beams. We spot a wandering cow in the nearby distance and track the hoof-prints around the metal. He shrugs off the nest, his only concern being that the animals don’t get hurt. In shape, the sculptures mimic the ways the flora and fauna of the region have survived. “Things out here have defenses,” Gray says — they’re spiked, tough, resilient. In that way, there’s a sense of hostility to the work.
Gray mentions more than once that this land, these structures, exist “outside the parameters of safety,” which, in some way, was the draw for purchasing the land in the first place. Someone who climbs cliff faces in Yosemite and rides motorcycles may have a knack for that sort of thing. Having lived in the desert of New Mexico for nearly 30 years, Gray knew early on that he was interested in buying land for the works somewhere between Moab and the Big Bend. But while he honors the beauty of the West Texas landscape, regarding his art, Gray is agnostic about setting. “If anything this setting is too nice,” he says, fearing he may have outdone himself. He believes there is room for the structures to exist in urban environments, or in conversation with other architectural elements, where he believes the dialogue could become more interesting.
Gray’s signature on each of the works is stamping a size 11 Dr. Marten boot print — the same one he’s wearing on our tour of the site — into a concrete slab. While we’re talking at Mile Dark, he grabs a Multimaster tool from the back of his 4Runner and cuts down a few gangling bolts. I poke fun at the on-the-nose “PUNK” tattoo that sprawls across his right forearm. He laughs, but, unsurprisingly, has something thoughtful to say about it. “Punk is an ethos. It’s a rejection, but it’s also highly motivated for change.”
While his work isn’t intentionally anti Donald Judd, he confesses that “Judd’s order and logic is not how I live.” One of the greatest differences in their work, he notes, is the attention to surface. “Judd and many other artists cared about the surface … None of that matters to me. It’s a waste of time, at least in this instance, because the elements are going to destroy it.” Another difference, aside from scale, is the lack of control he has over his work when it’s finished. While much art in the region has curators, caretakers and a locked gate, his final product boasts unprotected aluminum; he leaves Sharpie-markings intact and accepts that lightning may strike. He bolts, instead of welds, the pieces together so that they can sway and creak in high winds. Though he calls Broken Mile a “monster,” it is still at the mercy of the open desert.
Gray believes the work exists “outside of the art world,” both in its physical separation from civilization as well as in its experimental ethos. “This is about as far away as you can get from a New York City gallery,” Gray says, “The richest guy doesn’t get to just walk away with this.” And if visitors want to see the work, they’ll have to make the voyage to get there (though the location is available via Google maps if you search Broken Mile.)
The works are free and open to the public, though it’s encouraged that people do not touch or climb on them. “This is a gift to West Texas,” he says. He wants the work to be interpreted and experienced any way the viewer wishes, though a word that can be used to describe it is certainly “bewildering.”
It is not a leap to say that these structures exist as a sort of paradox. While their massive scale and jutting metal give them a menacing, helter-skelter effect, they also exhibit a sense of weightlessness, their overlapping shapes floating cloud-like against the backdrop of a pristine sky. Light beams through them and glints off of them. There are no right angles, but the design is precise; they’re chaotic and mathematical.
And the same word could be used in regards to the artist himself. Wearing all black, he exudes light. And while we discuss that the role of the artist is one of great responsibility, he says it’s also true that “the artist’s job is to remain wild.”