A roadrunner 20 feet tall and 40 feet long, built entirely from rubbish, stands at the Scenic View rest area on Interstate 10 west of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Olin Calk made the first version in 1993 at the city landfill, using nothing that had not been salvaged on the site, to make people look at what they were throwing away. The city's visitor bureau dates it a year earlier and names a second artist, but the city's own catalogue of its public art credits Calk alone. The city moved it to the rest area in 2001 and Calk re-skinned it in the process. By about 2011 weather and souvenir hunters had wrecked it, and it was taken to the artist's own property, where it sat for roughly three years while the city decided what to do. It came back in June 2014, re-feathered from thrift store rejects and scrap pulled out of the municipal recycling centre, the landfill having closed in the meantime. Its eyes are Volkswagen headlights. The rest of it is old trainers, golf clubs, plastic toys, a trophy, telephones, computer keyboards, crutches and bicycle parts, legible as junk from a few feet away and convincingly like a bird from the highway. Calk mounted the rebuilt bird on an artificial rock, which was meant to discourage the people who had been climbing on to sit astride it. One practical note about the site: the rest area is on the south side of the interstate and can only be entered from the eastbound lanes, just past the Picacho Avenue interchange, so westbound traffic passes it with no way in.
Getting there
32.2823, -106.8663
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
