BROKEN MILE
A sculpture by Matthew Gray
30°42’53.8” N, 104°45’57.4” W
It’s the middle of a spring day, 83 degrees. Red blooms of the ocotillo sway and bounce, buffeted by strong southwest winds. To the south, Los Pilares form a rugged vertical curtain behind the Rio Grande.
High on a hand built wooden ladder, Matthew Gray wrestles another length of aluminum tubing into place, preparing to join it to the over 100 other identical pieces that are already a part of this remote high desert site.
We’re in far west Texas. You could say we’re a two-hour drive from El Paso. Or an hour northwest of Marfa. Or just outside of Valentine. Or ten miles from the Mexican border. But really, by most people’s standards, we’re in the middle of nowhere.
It is land continually scoured by hot, dry winds and then washed with the occasional monsoon-driven deluge. There are no soft edges here. At an elevation of 4,200 feet, the sun is harsh and relentless. The ground is either littered with jagged stones or covered in dry, brittle soil, a fitting foundation for supporting things that are equally sharp, unwelcoming, and often carry a venomous sting or bite. If you wait long enough, you’ll see billows of a dust trail left by an abused pickup, likely driven by either a rancher maintaining a widely dispersed herd or border patrol agents on the lookout for anyone desperate enough to attempt a crossing. This is No Country For Old Men country.
Gray found this property (which he now owns) after three years spent searching the West for an appropriate location to build this sculpture and the two others that will follow. Finding the right place for the work was limited by a number of factors: First, the land needed to be for sale or potentially available for purchase. And it had to be free of zoning restrictions that might curtail what could be built on it. But most importantly, it had to fit Gray’s vision, as the surrounding landscape is an integral part of the work.
The sculpture itself consists of 5,280 feet (exactly a mile) of 2” x 4” .125” wall aluminum tubing. Each piece is 21 feet long and weighs about 33 pounds. But the mile of material is just one measure of the scope of this project. The tubing is trailered to the site from El Paso, 150 miles away. Gray lives in Santa Fe, 412 miles away. When he’s working on the sculpture, he stays in Marfa, 56 miles away. The odometer on Gray’s 2006 4Runner currently reads 211,000 miles, an estimated 20,000 of which are the result of wrangling this self-funded endeavor. It is a project that literally consumes miles and miles of effort.
All of these miles converge on a 48-foot square chunk of Texas desert, where a grid of 12 steel anchors rise from their concrete bases like seed heads from the yucca. The aluminum tubes are bolted to these anchors and to each other with half-inch threaded rods. The connections are solid, but light enough to allow the structure to bend and flex with the wind.
This isn’t a project that has been drafted and load-tested in a 3D CAD program. Instead, it is being built the way most everything in this raw country gets done: with a combination of common sense, intuition, and grit. Materials used are simple and readily obtainable. Methods are time-proven. Problems are solved on the fly. It is the ranching way.
It’s now mid-summer. That means 5am starts, hustling to bolt the new pieces in place before the thermometer heads into unbearable. Gray relies on his big-wall climbing experience as the sculpture gains height. Lengths of tubing are levered into position through brute force or by ever-changing system of ropes and pulleys. Moving above the reach of the ladder, the sculpture itself becomes the scaffolding, with Gray tightrope walking across the slim edges of tubing. As long as you don’t hit your head on the way down, a fall here probably won’t result in death. But Gray would likely be incapacitated, trapped underneath his dream. With nobody around and no cell service, only circling buzzards would signal something was wrong.
Gray works on the project throughout the summer. The forms of the sculpture occupy so much mind space that they not only fill his waking hours but also invade his sleep. The results are fever dreams of twisted metal, with frantic two-dimensional sketches and artwork emerging from the experience.
Gray completed Broken Mile in October 2023. The sculpture can now be seen shimmering in the sun from a considerable distance. Individual arms of tubing poke in all directions, like thorns on the cacti below. It is a work that changes dramatically depending on where, when, and how it is viewed. Looking out from within the sculpture, it is a mess of angles and lines, a barely ordered chaos. It reflects the randomness of the stars in these dark skies. Like branches, it combines air and mass to define space. Its location makes it both a vantage point and a beacon.
To view Broken Mile, to experience its presence in the environment, you’ve got to put in your own miles. The site is really not close to anywhere. And that’s the point. The journey is part of the destination.
If you do visit, a high-clearance vehicle is necessary for driving to the site. But you can also park on the road and walk in. Please be respectful of the work itself and of the private property on which it sits.
