AURELIA, Iowa — Ingenuity and creativity spring from nearly every farmer's shop. Out of necessity, farmers must get creative when repairing or modifying tractors and farm equipment. Some come up with their own designs, building their own equipment.
Denny Allen has done all of that in his shop, but his creativity goes beyond farm-related work. "I've always had a mind for putting things together," Allen said while standing amidst the scrap iron and tools in the tidy shop at his home south of Aurelia. "I can make anything, but I can't make anything square.
" Denny Allen, a now-retired farmer who for years has created sculptures from scrap metal, stands at a mammoth he made that's on display along the Kiwanis Walking Path in Aurelia, Iowa. Allen estimates he's made 50-60 large pieces and dozens of smaller pieces, and 10 of them can be found along the trail in Aurelia. Good thing the creations for which he's known don't need perfect angles.
Since 1986, but especially in the past five years, Allen has welded together worn-out pieces from farm equipment, old tools, scrap iron and almost anything else into a menagerie of metal sculptures of all shapes and sizes. "I keep telling people it keeps me out of the bar," he said with a hearty laugh. "It's fun being creative.
" He calls his creations crude, but each has a unique beauty that becomes more appreciable when you take an up-close look and see what discarded items Allen utilized to make the features of his animals come to life. Denny Allen finished this spider sculpture earlier this summer for placement over the Kiwanis Walking Trail in Aurelia, Iowa. Made from various salvaged pieces, the spider is tall enough that trail users can walk or ride bikes under it.
His first sculpture, a stegosaurus he made in 1986, contained numerous old disc blades, as does a tortoise he just finished earlier this year. Old keys line the mouth of an alligator. There are combine cutter blades and guards, truck axles and whatever else he might salvage from old machinery.
He's got 5-gallon buckets filled with machine parts and other odds and ends. A ton of iron punch-outs given to him by R.J.
Thomas Manufacturing in Cherokee is among the most useful components. The small, flat, notched pieces can be welded flat to appear as skin or raised to look like hair. "I get rid of a lot of junk, but I accumulate a lot of junk," said Allen, who retired from farming last year.
Anything and everything can provide the inspiration for a new piece. When Allen was given a rusting frame from an old gas station sign a few weeks ago, "I thought those look like horns." A few weeks later, a massive ox now stands in his yard, that sign frame making up a rack that would make any longhorn proud.
Its coat is made up of the aforementioned iron punch-outs, but a closer look reveals axe blades used for ears and cutter blades and guards in the hooves. Scrap iron of all shapes and sizes is stored in Denny Allen's rural Aurelia, Iowa, shop. The retired farmer has created numerous sculptures on display throughout Cherokee and Buena Vista counties using metal donated and scavenged from old farm equipment and other sources.
Allen learned to weld in high school and spent a lifetime farming, using those welding skills on his tractors and machinery. After that first sculpture, ideas of how to creatively salvage what he and others toss aside kept coming. Early on, he created smaller items made from silverware, keys, washers and scrap pieces.
The bigger ideas came to fruition when Allen wasn't too busy with farm work. As he got more time in recent years, his production picked up, and it doesn't take long for an idea to take shape. He might spend five minutes sketching and jotting down some measurements, then he finds the right pieces and starts welding.
"I just like to figure out how to make it once," Allen said, though he's been convinced to duplicate a few of his creations. Allen estimates he has 50-60 large pieces throughout Cherokee and Buena Vista counties and others in Des Moines, Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. A rhinoceros he made a few years ago is currently on display at SculptureWalk in downtown Sioux Falls.
Denny Allen looks out his rural Aurelia, Iowa, shop, where he's created dozens of sculptures made from scrap metal and other salvaged pieces. Aside from a few pieces he bought earlier this year, all of his sculptures are made from 100% salvaged material. Closer to home, you might see a serpent he built in the yard of his daughter's Morningside home in Sioux City, and anyone who's been to Ridge View High School in Holstein has surely noticed the velociraptor statue out front, a creation Allen was asked to make in honor of the school's Raptor nickname.
A moose and a buffalo along the highways near Cherokee have become landmarks. His largest collection stands along the Kiwanis Walking Path in Aurelia. Winding through natural wetlands, the trail takes walkers, runners and cyclists past 10 of Allen's sculptures, including a towering mammoth made of 6,000 pieces and weighing more than a ton.
It's been knocked over by a tornado and a derecho, so Allen installed anchors that should ensure this mammoth doesn't suffer extinction as its real-life ancestors did. Earlier this summer Allen created and placed a large spider over a side path. The sculpture is notable in that it's large enough that trail users can walk or bike under its tall legs.
It's also the first sculpture Allen made using metal he didn't collect for free. "I had never, ever bought anything until I built the spider," he said. To be fair, the tubing he used for the legs had been sitting in the owner's shop for 30-some years, so it might be closer to salvage than not.
Denny Allen shows an iron punch-out, one of thousands of similar scrap pieces he was given by a local manufacturer and has used to form the bodies of many of the animal sculptures he creates out of salvaged metal. The retired farmer has created notable pieces such as a buffalo and moose that can be seen along the highways near Cherokee. The center of Allen's shop currently is bare, no projects under way.
What's next? "You know, I don't know," he said. "I rarely do." He'll run across something in his scrap collection or someone will drop off something, sparking the next inspiration.
"It's scrap to them, it's treasure to me," he said. And the rest of us are left to treasure the sight of whatever comes out of Allen's shop next. An old sign frame provided Denny Allen with the inspiration for a recently completed ox that now stands on his farm near Aurelia, Iowa.
When someone gave him the frame, he envisioned them as a set of horns, and he quickly came up with the idea to build an ox out of the old frame and other scrap metal he's collected in his shop. Denny Allen, a retired farmer living near Aurelia, Iowa, has used salvaged metal to create large outdoor sculptures of prehistoric creatures and modern species as well as smaller pieces made from silverware, keys, washers and other metal pieces. A palm tree created by Denny Allen stands outside the shop at his rural Aurelia, Iowa, farm.
A now-retired farmer, Allen has created dozens of sculptures, large and small, from salvaged iron. Unlimited Access to the Sioux City Journal Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly!.
