Colorado community honored through metal sculpture

Jeff Bates of Fruita, Colo., tips his cap to the community’s roots in agriculture and outdoor recreation with metal sculptures that populate two traffic circles. Images: Jeff Bates

Fruita, Colo., a town on Colorado’s western slope, located northwest of Grand Junction and near McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area, has deep roots in agriculture and is a popular location for outdoor enthusiasts who enjoy hunting, fishing, biking, and hiking. Thanks in large part to Jeff Bates, Fruita is also known for its functional and decorative metal art.

Bates, an Oklahoma native, cut his teeth as an oilfield welder for many years. He’d always been creative and into art, but when he learned to weld through Future Farmers of America, he was drawn to using a weld torch to put random pieces of metal together.

“When everyone else was working on the class project, which was building a horse trailer, I was fiddling around making stuff with a torch. It was always art-related stuff,” Bates explained.

That “fiddling” has never really stopped.

Changing Careers

Bates graduated from Northwest Oklahoma State University, Alva, Okla., with a degree in wildlife conservation and law enforcement. He financed his education by working the oilfields, but he kept up with his metal art, building small-scale pieces whenever he could.

When his career in the oilfield came to an end, Bates moved to Colorado and became a police officer for a small mountain community.

“But on the side I was building furniture for a friend of mine. She convinced me to build some things to sell in her store. That was the beginning of another twist in life. I kept building things and she kept selling them. Pretty soon I was making more money welding up those pieces than I was as an officer,” Bates said.

At that point, he left law enforcement and went into business for himself full time. Business boomed—he expanded his reach, building metal furniture for roughly 20 stores scattered throughout the western U.S., and had five employees. When 2008 rolled along, Bates was hit with a double whammy—the financial crisis that sparked a recession, and a debilitating injury that laid him up for quite a while. Eventually his business, Sky River Ranch, was back to being a one-man shop.

If there’s a welding torch involved, Bates can probably do it. In addition to building metal furniture, Bates also tackles any and all structural work, such as handrails, and can create metal sculptures. He also customizes cars through his side business, Bonehead Customz.

A Round-A-Bout Project

Bates estimates that he was first introduced to the local Rotary Club around 1999 when it purchased a life-size metal horse he had built.

Bates used found or discarded objects in his sculptures, many of which were donated by local farmers, bringing more meaning to the pieces.

“They were looking to kickstart an initiative to put art all around town. They came out and took a look at the horse I was making and they were really impressed.”

That introduction led the club to Bates once again to build metal park benches for the town. Bates said he could make them for the same price or cheaper than having them made in China, and the costs for shipping would be nonexistent since he was local. To date, he’s made roughly 50 or 60 benches for Fruita and the surrounding communities.

When the project to create a sculpture for each of Fruita’s two roundabouts became available, Bates applied and eventually was hired. The theme of the project was “Honoring the past, envisioning the future,” and the first thing that came to Bates’ mind was to give a nod to area agriculture.

“Agriculture is huge here, and it has been since people settled here. They figured out how to make irrigation ditches and from there planted orchards. So, I looked at creating something centered around agriculture as honoring the past, even though it’s still here and hasn’t gone away.”

Fruita is a growing attraction for cycling, hiking, fishing, and “Jeeping.” So it made sense for Bates to create something that honored those activities as well.

The two traffic circles are located back-to-back just off a major interstate and have an interior space of 70 ft. dia. Whatever he decided to create needed to be large enough that it wouldn’t be dwarfed. For this reason, Bates opted to create three sculptures for each of the traffic circles (six total).

In one traffic circle, Bates honored local agriculture with a massive 12-ft tall horse and rider, followed by a farmer driving a tractor, and an apple tree. In the second circle he made a hiker, a cyclist, and a kayaker. He used discarded metal parts and components to build each of the sculptures, which, again, turned out to be another nod to the community’s history.

“In the case of the horse and rider, there’s a lot of history on the little pieces and parts that make him up. A lot of them are farming tools that were used to farm this area generations ago, brought to me by the farmers themselves,” Bates said.

With the project complete, Bates has had time to reflect on the process and appreciate the result.

“There’s a feeling of accomplishment, but it’s also about the legacy that I’ll leave behind because a lot of people don’t get that opportunity, so I really appreciate it and it means so much. I’m hoping these sculptures will last 100 years.”

Bates, an Oklahoma native, cut his teeth as an oilfield welder for many years. He’d always been creative and into art, but when he learned to weld through Future Farmers of America, he was drawn to using a weld torch to put random pieces of metal together.