"Rodeo Idols" Bronze Rodeo Sculpture by Edd Hayes fine bronze sculptor

Rodeo Idols by Mary Ann Enslow

Houston, TX, jeweler I.W. Marks is locally and nationally recognized for his support of the fine arts and he is also recognized as the owner of the number one casting of every bronze Edd Hayes creates. "Edd is not an artist doing western bronzes. He's a rodeo rider turned artist," says Marks, who believes that Hayes' cowboy background shows in his work. "From any side of a Hayes sculpture you know you're looking at real life."

Hayes' boyhood heroes were cowboys and rodeo riders, and from his early teens on a small farm just south of Midland, TX, he hung around the rodeo cowboys, learning to rope calves and ride bulls. He learned well enough to make it to the American Junior Rodeo Association finals three times. And throughout his presculpting years he was a weekend participant in steer wrestling on the professional rodeo circuit.

Art didn't hold the same attraction for young Edd. "My mother tried her best to turn me toward art in high school and in college, but I never got serious about it," says Hayes. At Tivy High School, Kerrville, TX, he took the requisite art classes, but his sketches and drawings were assignment-driven, at best. "I don't advocate bypassing college," he says in retrospect. "My sons will go to college."

After high-school graduation in 1963, Hayes enlisted in the U.S. Navy, then worked in the plumbing, electrical and construction trades. The benchmark year for him would come in 1977. In February of that year he tied Jim Bynurn for the world-record steer-wrestling speed of 2.4 seconds. He also married Carolyn King and moved to Grove, in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma. There, near Grand Lake of the Cherokee, the Hayeses' son Paul was born the following year. During this time, while attending sales meetings in nearby Tulsa for the Acco Feed Division of Anderson Clayton Company, Hayes discovered the Gilerease Museum, home to one of the finest western American art collections in the country. "Art tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at those paintings and bronzes and knew instinctively that I should be doing art."

Hayes returned to the Gilcrease and absorbed all he could. Amazingly, two years later in 1979 he had his first show, participating in an invitational exhibit -sponsored by the Hanging Tree Gallery in Midland, TX. "The drawings sold first," he recalls, "but like many untrained painters, my first efforts with color were pretty garish. I mentioned this to a sculptor friend, and his words ring as dear today as they did then: 'You're probably not a painter; you're probably a sculptor."'

Hayes thought the comment was off the wall, but it was enough of a suggestion for him to buy some wax. Two years later, he got around to fiddling with it and created his first sculpture of a lone cowboy with a saddle and rigging bag. The edition of 15 bronzes sold out, starting a pattern that continues to this day. Now a firm believer in the maxim that artists are born to their medium, Hayes is committed to creating artworks that have "no front or back. A sculpture is strongest when it can be enjoyed from any angle."

Hayes believes that details add to the success of his compositions. He critiques his figures for anatomical accuracy and is just as finicky about a horse's ears, nostrils or hooves. Details convey personality in people as well as animals, says Hayes, who now paints only for a change of pace. He still sells some sketches, but "mostly I just take a piece of clay and start working it. I can tell more about a piece by seeing it in the round."

From the beginning Hayes has limited his editions to 15 or 25, with the exception of large-edition maquettes sold to find his monumental works. "I prefer to sell out an edition and go on to the next sculpture. I'm fairly prolific," he explains. His rodeo subjects share space with sculpture expressing humor and human interest, like the small piece titled PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE, which depicts a "skinny 10-year-old" Edd Hayes struggling to saddle his first horse.

On the walls of his Houston studio, Hayes' achievements in art and rodeo are documented in numer-ous photos. Several Plastoline clay models sit on tables, among them a study of actor/polo player Alex Cord alongside rodeo clown Kajun Kidd (D.J. Gaudin) and champion bull rider Jim Shoulders.

Most of these table-sized works are cast by Deep in the Heart Art Foundry at Bastrop, near Austin, TX. Back in 1981, when his career was just beginning, financing his castings was Hayes' biggest roadblock. He tells how he moved his family, including a second son, Zachary, to the Houston area, and began exhibiting at the exposition accompanying the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in 1982. In four square feet of space subleased from Dale Fox of Fox Galleries, Hayes hung two paintings and set his wax models on bases. "I had 'Do Not Touch' signs all over the waxes, but it didn't keep people from mashing the noses of my cowboys. Then Irv Marks walked up and asked 'How much is this one ... and that one?' I nearly fell off my chair!"

"I was working on a rodeo committee and saw Edd's display before the show opened," recounts the man who would become the first of Hayes' faithful collectors. "I told him I liked the waxes, but I didn't have any money with me. I said I'd be back. I didn't get back the next day, but I did get there the following day and gave him a deposit for the bronzes."

Hayes' rodeo connections have given him entree to many of the rodeo stars he's admired since childhood. In 1983 he began working with the actor/champion team roper Ben Johnson on the Pro Celebrity Rodeo. Through Johnson's string of charity rodeos, Hayes has built friendships with legendary cowboys like the late Casey Tibbs, who would become the first of 11 world rodeo champions in Hayes' Legends of the Rodeo series that is on permanent display at the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy, Colorado Springs, CO.

The Legends series led to Hayes' first monument-a commission to do a tribute to Casey Tibbs. Chosen by Tibbs for the assignment, Hayes sculpted a 26-foot monument titled THE CHAMP, in which he meticulously portrayed Tibbs' facial features and the attributes peculiar to the famous bucking horse Necktie. Working 14-hour days, Hayes pointed up his initial study, had the monument cast at Battle Mountain Bronze, Minturn, CO, and installed at the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame within 140 days, making it possible for Tibbs to attend its dedication before his death. "I didn't want Casey to be without heart," Hayes told the crowd at the dedication. "So inside Casey's bronze chest is a small bronze heart inscribed 'Ride Cowboy Ride'."

Today, Edd Hayes' collectors include President Bush, Hollywood celebrities, pro-rodeo champs, everyday ranchers and museums, including the Gene Autry Western Heritage Center, which recently inducted into its collection a sculpture depicting Ben Johnson team-roping with Joe Crow. Despite all the acclaim, Hayes retains a human quality and an honesty that some artists lose when they're no longer struggling, says Irv Marks. That fact is attested to by Hayes' continuing volunteer work for the livestock show's school art competition. But his rodeo presence is felt in even a grander way these days. In 1991 the show's art committee commissioned Hayes to create a monument to flank the doorway of the horse arena. Visible from the I-610 Loop and Fannin Street, the six horses in WILD AND FREE soar 20 feet atop a 120-foot long stone and grass plinth.

Edd Hayes' path from rodeo rider to artist has much to do with getting what you need, if not what you want. "I never achieved becoming a world champion rodeo cowboy," he concludes. "But in place of that I've sculpted nearly every rodeo champion I idolize."

In turn, Edd Hayes has become the idol of those he idolizes. As Casey Tibbs put it, "Thank you, Edd Hayes, for making me look good."

Southwest Art
April 1994