“Dad moved all of us kids out in the country,” said Jocelyn Russell Saturday afternoon as a crowd of her friends and family sat and looked upon her giant bronze sculpture of two sandhill cranes. “So we had a wonderful upbringing on a little less than two acres, I think. We had a drain ditch. He wanted to make sure us kids all had something to do besides going into and getting in trouble.”
Growing up in Waverly, just a few miles south of Alamosa, the Russell property was often visited by sandhill cranes. “But I still remember the cranes and their call to me was just haunting and it’s eternal in my heart.”
It all started more than six years ago when the GFWC Woman’s Citizenship Club decided Alamosa needed a Jocelyn Russell sculpture. Russell, a world-renowned monument sculptor, has more than 60 life-size works installed in public and private locations. Her work is grand in scope and scale.
From Secretariat the Triple Crown winner to Tefu the elephant, Russell’s work captures giant creatures in fine detail. Sandhill Cranes are not giant, but they are ancient and they are a piece of the mosaic that is the San Luis Valley.
“I remember always trying to catch them where they were circling,” she said, “but sometimes I just couldn’t see them. And I spent hours watching and listening to the cranes.”
“Into Thin Air: Cranes in Flight” will sit for a very long time on the corner of Sixth Street and State Avenue in Alamosa, a memorial to time, a memorial to a creature who has called this Valley home for a long, long time.
Though Russell hasn’t lived in the Valley for more than 26 years, it is still her home and her sculpture is dedicated to that home and to the Valley’s peoples.
During the ceremony on Saturday, Russell was flanked by the members of the Woman’s Citizenship Club of Alamosa, all of them beaming with joy. The vision realized, the dream come true, the cranes in flight.
Weighing just under 700 pounds, the sculpture had to be specially designed to support the weight of the two birds. Russell designed it so that a five-inch pipe winds its way up through the base of the sculpture into each of the birds’ bodies.
“There would be a lot of mobility in it if we didn’t have a strong armature,” she said. “So I had to fudge a little bit on the anatomy, just to fit that pipe in there, but I’m pretty happy with it.”
If she had moved the top bird back, the cranes would have looked like stacked cards in a deck, “so I branched them off and stretched those legs on the top crane a bit and I’m really excited about it. I think it came out pretty good for the limitations of two birds in flight.”
Late on Friday morning, Denny Jenks from Adonis Bronze in Alpine, UT, arrived in Alamosa after making the nine-hour journey with the sculpture strapped upright to a flatbed trailer. Transport was nerve-racking, but seeing Jenks round the corner into Alamosa put everyone’s mind at ease.
With the help of a Alcon Construction crew and crane, the sculpture was mobile for the last time as the crew drilled the bolts into the base and secured the sculpture into where it will remain.
Russell, working on this project as well as her other monument projects, donated her time. The Woman’s Citizenship Club raised more than $90,000 to cover foundry costs. Alcon Construction built the base where the sculpture sits as well as the garden walls that surround it. North River Greenhouse supplied the flowers that will sit in the beds of those gardens.
“I know everybody had a huge hand in this,” Russell said.
Members of the Woman’s Citizenship Club placed a few mementos into the base of the sculpture before it was bolted down.
Next up for Russell is taking the lead on a sculpture memorializing Wyoming’s Grizzly 399. Grizzly 399 was struck and killed by a car in the Snake River Canyon in 2024. She was 28 years old, much older than most grizzlies live to be. She reared 22 cubs in her life. The sculpture will feature Grizzly 399 and a clutch of four cubs. Russell is expected to complete the work by Mother’s Day 2026.
As the speeches ended, Russell shook hands, hugged her friends, and took a few hundred photos with everyone who came to appreciate the artwork. Blue Rooster played the blues and most everyone stuck around, drank cold lemonade and enjoyed Alamosa’s newest piece of public art.
“It was just really important to me that you all wanted this in this town,” Russell said, “and I’m so glad we chose the cranes, because I think they are just the most iconic symbol, to me, in the Valley.”