By RANDY GONZALES
Special to Hays Post
As the song goes, home on the range is where the buffalo roam. That is, unless it is Pete Felten’s creation, “Buffalo in Denim.”
Felten, the Hays sculptor famously known for his works of art using limestone, created a buffalo made out of denim patches in 1978. He made this particular buffalo for an exhibit at the Hays Public Library.
“I was having a buffalo show inside the library, little things,” Felten said. “I thought I would do something big for the opening.”
The buffalo later wound up in Dodge City, first at a school and later at a restaurant there. The story goes that there was one time when an intoxicated cowboy tried to ride it. When the restaurant changed ownership recently, Felten’s buffalo was destined for the scrap heap.
However, when Michael Jilg, a Hays artist and former art professor at Fort Hays State University, learned of the plan, he arranged for the buffalo to be relocated back to Hays.
“It just fell out of the sky,” Jilg said of the opportunity to save Felten’s creation. “I think there’s only one.”
Now, 47 years later, the buffalo has found a home at the Ellis County Historical Society’s renovated gallery. The buffalo, which is about 6.5 feet long and 5.5 feet high, was hauled from Dodge City to Hays earlier this month.
The buffalo has a base with wheels underneath it, which were inspected by Felten when it arrived back in Hays. Once it was carried from the van, up the front steps of the museum and into the gallery, the buffalo was easily wheeled into a corner.
“I never knew there was anything he did that wasn’t stone,” said Amanda Rupp, the executive director of the local historical society. “I’m really excited to show it this summer. It’s one of a kind.”
Rupp, who helped carry the buffalo inside the museum, said there was no comparison to how heavy it is in relation to a limestone buffalo of similar size. The denim buffalo has a wire frame with padding inside.
“That’s way lighter,” Rupp said. “It’s top-heavy. It’s not heavy. It’s just awkward.”
Felten, now 92, first started sculpting limestone in 1957. He worked long and hard that summer of ’78 on the buffalo, sewing blue denim patches on the iconic creature that represents the long-ago history of Hays and the American West.
“I had calluses on my fingertips I never had before,” Felten recalled. “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
The Chamber of Hays had a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday morning at the gallery in the museum at 100 W. Seventh, in recognition of a successful fundraising campaign. Front and center was “Buffalo in Denim,” casting a wary eye at curious onlookers.
Leigh Purdy, vice-president of membership at the Chamber of Hays, saw the buffalo for the first time at Friday’s gathering.
Purdy remembered that when she worked at a local restaurant while in high school, she would come home smelling like kitchen grease, and was curious to see if Felten’s buffalo also had kitchen smells from being located in a restaurant all those many years. However, the denim buffalo passed the smell test.
“Honestly, he’s in pretty good shape for not being behind a glass panel,” all those years, Purdy said. “It’s a really unique piece.”
The ribbon-cutting, with more than 50 in attendance, kicked off the gallery’s grand re-opening. Felten’s buffalo, as well as a traveling exhibit from Salina’s Smoky Hill Museum – “A Place to Call Home,” which features a replica of a covered wagon – will be on display.
The museum’s summer hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays. The Smoky Hill exhibit will be on display in Hays until Sept. 28, and the gallery is open to the public at no charge.
Why he chose to create a textile rendition of a bison instead of carving another limestone sculpture is a mystery even to Felten himself.
“I don’t remember that at all, why I would do that,” Felten said, adding he would get material wherever he could find it.
Felten does remember other creatures who enjoyed the denim buffalo slowly coming to life in his studio in downtown Hays.
“My kittens in the studio, they loved it, climbing on it, in it,” Felten said. “I never realized I made a bed for them.”