The last day of our Western tour would include a lot of driving through Texas as we made our way back to Huntsville. We broke up the day with multiple stops along the way and incorporated many of our favorite things into our drive!
Texas Tech Art Tour
We began our morning in Lubbock–home of Mac Davis and Buddy Holly–by creating our own tour of Texas Tech’s campus public art. For Brian and Christina this was their first time at Texas Tech University. They are known for having a remarkable public art collection on campus because of Texas Tech University System’s public art program. We began by mapping out our art scavenger hunt that Professor Yawn had scouted out the night before. The first sculpture we saw was The Read Reader (a play on “Red Raider”) by Terry Allen, an artist we became familiar with thanks to Betty Moody.
We also saw Tornado Of Ideas by Tom Otterness, Comma by Po Shu Wang…
…and Prometheus by Charles Umlauf. As we kept walking we also saw a familiar piece by Glenna Goodacre.
We had seen her work at the Albuquerque Art Museum, so it was exciting to recognize her art. Professor Yawn led us to a Jesus Moroles sculpture, The Lapstrake Gateway: A Portal of Discovery.
Professor Yawn told us to keep lookout for a horse sculpture, but we had no idea it was a Deborah Butterfield horse!
One of the last sculptures we saw was the Steel Horse by Robert Bruno near the Architect building.
Bruno was a new artist to us, but it wouldn’t be the last of his art to see in one day. We definitely enjoyed looking for familiar art around the campus and worked up an appetite too!
Spankys
We knew our trip to Lubbock would be incomplete without sampling Spanky’s famous cheese sticks. We ordered two plates and sat down to enjoy them. They weren’t as large as we remembered, but they were sufficiently large that we didn’t finish them, despite their tastiness.
Buddy Holly
Before leaving, we made a brief stop at the Buddy Holly Center, taking the opportunity to get a photo with Buddy Holly’s famous glasses–or, rather, an oversized version of them.
Holly, the singer of “That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue,” “Everyday,” “Think it Over” and “Words of Love,” also had a huge influence on music, being a particular influence on The Beatles. Plus, his glasses sort of look like Brian’s.
Bruno’s Home
Before officially leaving Lubbock, we took a detour to a neighborhood overlooking a small lake. At first it looked like a normal neighborhood until we turned a corner and Robert Bruno’s home became visible. Robert Bruno taught at Texas Tech University’s Architecture department before passing away in 2008. He was even featured on HGTV’s “Extreme Homes” and The Learning Channel. The home looked very similar to the sculpture on campus named Steel Horse.
Unfortunately, he passed away before the home reached completion and it is now kept up and available by tour, with the hopes of completing the interior.
We admired the originality and the architectural details of the home, and we were grateful that, although our stay in Lubbock was brief, we filled in as much exploring as we could.
