One Man’s Junk Is Another’s University Mascot

Artist Juan Stockmeyer finds inspiration in a place many of us avoid: the junkyard. The 66-year-old El Paso native has been haunting the resting places for cars, broken appliances, and other objects on both sides of the border for the past two decades. He’s loved collecting metal since he was a child. “Mexico is like a graveyard of old gears,” he says. “You can’t really find them here, at least cheaply.” From his home studio near the University of Texas at El Paso, Stockmeyer turns the metal scraps into both decorative and functional art. When he found a bunch of old mining pickaxes, he began welding them onto large gears. These simple, free-standing sculptures, ranging from ten inches to twelve feet tall, started popping up all…

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