By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Pete Felten is not sure how long he has been working on his latest sculpture to be on display in downtown Hays.
At model of a steam engine, Felten, 86, said he could be have been working on the 300-pound sculpture for about 10 years.
"When you have been carving for 60 years, it gets a little bit fuzzy in the back, you know, trying to remember everything," he said from his Stone Gallery on Sixth Street in Hays.
The steam engine is carved from native Kansas post rock limestone. It may have originally been cut for a building step, Felten said.
The post rock limestone is the stronger of the two limestones found in Kansas, but can difficult to work with because of its layers. The stronger layer tends to be in the middle of the stone, which made the fence posts it was used for stronger. However, it means the sculptor has to work with with varying hardnesses.
Felten used the same pattern he used for a similar sculpture that is on display at Hays Regional Airport.
He wanted the engine to be patterned after the locomotives that traveled through Hays. He studied a engine that is on display at Fort Riley. Felten estimated the train he modeled the sculpture after was in use in about the 1890s. He even researched the guts of the great machines.
He compared research on the engine to the knowledge he gleaned of bison anatomy to carve the many sculptures of the creatures he has created over the years.
"You got to [do the research]," Felten said, "or someone is going to say that you've got that all wrong. You better know what you're doing.
"When I carve a buffalo, I know their anatomy. I know what I am carving. If you don't know, it shows right away."
Felten carved the locomotive and all his sculptures with simple hand chisels, similar to what Michael Angelo used hundreds of years ago. Carving goes back millennia to the earliest art ever created by man, he said.
Felten said he was pleased with the final train sculpture, saying that he was fortunate to discover as he carved the stone was fairly clean.
"You never know how they are going to turn out," he said. "You would think after 60 years of carving, you would get some knowledge, but you don't. Each stone's different."
Often the limestone contains fossils or is discolored by iron, something he doesn't always know until he starts to carve the piece.
He explained pointing to a small bison he is carving that was sitting on the back of his classic red pickup. As he was carving the piece, he revealed a fossil about the size of a teacup saucer in the midsection of the animal.
So the challenge now is to reshape the body to the level of the fossil, he said, running his stone-worn hands along the surface of the limestone and marking it with a red carpenter's pencil.
The challenge is what keeps Felten carving every day. He compared challenges of carving to the excitement of a game show.
"If you are trying to make a stone look like something, there's a lot of challenges," Felten said. "Usually it works out. ... It's a big challenge. It's a complicated challenge. It's fun."
Not all inclusions are a problem. Felten explained some people liked the fossil inclusion in the limestone, so he tries to preserve them on some pieces. A piece of what had been a fence post, propped up on the edge of the pickup bed, had two shell fossils distinctly visible at the top
He said he thought the piece would eventually be a figure, but he hadn't quite got the stone figured out.
Felten is not particularly sentimental about his sculptures. He didn't have any grandiose words about the engine and said he didn't plan to attend the dedication of the sculpture.
However, Felten's work has been an iconic part of the Hays and Kansas landscape for decades.
Felten's work in the State Capitol building in Topeka, in the form of statues of the “Four Famous Kansans” — Amelia Earhart, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Arthur Capper and William Allen White — has been seen and admired by hundreds of thousands of visitors, as noted by the Downtown Hays Development Corp., which has facilitated the project.
The first large Felten sculpture, of the iconic American buffalo, called Monarch of the Plains, stands sentinel at historic old Fort Hays.
Despite the fame of some of his other work, Felten said he has a fondness for the lawman outside Hays City Hall on Main Street.
"He turned out a lot better than I worried about," he said. "You never know what theses sculptures are going to look like. If you got it wrong and can't change it, what are you going to do?
"I look at him every day out of the kitchen window, so he's easy to live with."
The train sculpture, which was donated by local attorney John Bird, is supposed to be placed at the pavilion with the next several weeks.
Although Felten approached his latest downtown Hays installation with humility, Bird emphasized the importance of the sculpture to the local history in a letter to the DHDC.
“When I saw Pete’s sculpture of the locomotive, I knew it needed to stay in Hays, Kansas,” Bird said. “It represents the very beginnings of this community, as Hays was founded on the same day that the Kansas Pacific Railroad, now Union Pacific, reached Hays.
"Without the railroad, Hays would have not developed into the economic and educational center of this region."
Bird, whose family has resided in Ellis County since 1906, has restored numerous historic structures in Ellis County, several made of the same stone from which the steam locomotive by Felten is carved. The Bird family farm is on land that was originally owned by the railroad and sold to local farmers to fund its expansion.
"I was raised on a farm bordering the railroad tracks, and I tried to go out to watch every train that passed, counting the cars, and I still do,” Bird said. “This sculpture deserves to be seen and enjoyed by all citizens of Hays and visitors to it. It was worth every penny I paid just to know that it would be preserved for display here."
Bird said he and his family traveled by rail in and out of Hays when passenger service was still available in Hays. He said the last time he took a train out of Hays was in 1971 when on his way to report for duty in the Marine Cops.
The sculpture is being placed near the original railroad tracks in the city, which are still in service. Bird said rail service is still important to the Hays economy and would like to see passenger rail restored in the community.
"I hope that when people go to see it and take their kids to appreciate it that they will be reminded of the amazing history of our town and also will appreciate that we have a world-class sculptor residing in our midst, still creating works of art that will last centuries to come,” Bird said.
“Each time we hear the train’s whistle blow as it crosses Main Street in Hays, America, this stone locomotive will be proudly showing its modern successors how the pioneers came to Kansas to make a home for themselves and for us,” he said.
Bird concluded, “I am grateful every day for the opportunities being raised in Ellis County gave me, and this is one small way to pay some back for those opportunities.”