Patagonia’s rich abundance of birds has brought the town many gifts and benefits over the years. It attracted major funding decades ago that led to the town’s treasured nature spaces, the Patagonia-Sonoita Preserve and the Paton Hummingbird Center. It inspires local artists and backyard naturalists. It provides the daily delight of listening to their lively chorus. And Patagonia’s birds attract a steady stream of enthusiastic birders from all over the world who add species to their life lists and lift the town economy.
Inspired by the birds’ importance and special energy in the town, artist Keith Spooner wanted to offer a major metal sculpture to add to Doc Mock Park. Last September, she presented three concepts to the town council, which was pleased to hear her proposal, though it could not provide any town funding. The council unanimously chose the concept that was her favorite, too: a set of five vertical feathers entitled “Together We Fly.”
“To me, the five feathers represent members of our community. It takes multiple feathers to create flight,” Spooner said. “Just like when members of our community come together, we can accomplish great things that take flight.”
At over eleven feet tall, the sculpture will be a dramatic addition to the park at the south end of town. There is plenty of open space there, and the town council wanted it to be visible from Highway 82 from both directions.
“I know that eleven feet seems tall, but when you’re driving by in a car, it won’t seem that tall in the scale of the park,” Spooner said.
An eleven-foot public sculpture needs careful planning and a strong foundation, and a structural engineer is currently analyzing the drawings. “I want to make sure my materials are thick enough and the fasteners are substantial enough against wind loads,” Spooner said. “We want to add some external lighting and a lot of rock and gravel around the base.”
Spooner will be holding a fundraiser at the Patagonia Lumber Company on Sunday, March 1, to raise money for the ground preparation, foundation structure, concrete pour and lighting. She hopes to raise $20,000, and already has a number of pledges. Bricks with sponsors’ names will become part of the base.
“Together We Fly is a community sculpture, belonging to all of us—not only those who participate in the physical creation of it physically and monetarily, but also to all of us who enjoy and appreciate it as a representation of who we are as a community,” she said.
Spooner is also a metal fabricator who builds information displays and signage. She built several of the park’s interpretive signs, including the ones at the southern ramada and the entrance to the Cemetery Trail.
She grew up in Ohio and West Virginia, and has been an artist and creator from a young age. “I grew up drawing, painting, sewing myself costumes and making different things. I went to college for fine arts, and I’ve been a graphic designer my whole life.”
After Spooner moved to Phoenix in 1997, her work included environmental graphic design, creating layouts and fabrication drawings for built objects like freestanding signage and maps for public spaces. “Working with the fabricators, I learned a lot about building things for public wear and tear,” she said.
Spooner got her start with hands-on welding and metal work when a neighbor knocked on her door.
“I moved into a new house, and this old man who lived down the street, Gene Hanson, came to my door one day,” she said. “He had a welder with him and a couple pieces of steel, and he said, ‘You’ve got to weld this for me. I have a pacemaker, so I can’t weld anymore.’
“That was my start in welding. Gene taught me a lot of things, and I took a class at a community college in Phoenix. Since I already knew how to design, [my work] just took off.”
Spooner was already a stone sculptor at that point, having gotten her inspiration in a gallery in Colorado Springs a few years before while traveling with her mother.
“We were looking at this piece of stone sculpture, and my mom said, ‘You could do that. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I think I could.’ So I came home from vacation and gathered the things that I thought would work to carve stone— just things from Home Depot.” Over time, she figured out her processes and got professional tools.
Spooner took her first couple of stone sculptures to a gallery in Phoenix and was immediately invited to do a solo show.
By 2019, Keith and her wife, Wendy Spooner, were looking to leave Phoenix. “Wendy and I were just ready to get out of the city,” she recalled. “We lived downtown and loved it for a long time, but it was just getting too congested. We wanted more peaceful surroundings. And mainly, we’d been talking for a long time about moving to a smaller community where we could have a bigger part in it.
“Wendy’s parents had lived in Tubac and Green Valley, and we would go down there to visit them. So when we started looking, we circled a big area on Zillow and looked everywhere from Tubac and Green Valley to Benson and Sonoita,” Spooner recalled. “Then we came to Patagonia. As soon as we drove into town, we thought, ‘This is totally it. This is this is where we want to be.’”
It didn’t take long for Keith and Wendy to get involved in the community. Keith took on various graphic design projects. She built the aforementioned information signs for Doc Mock Park, as well as gates and fences on private properties.
The couple’s biggest undertaking was to buy the Patagonia Lumber Company bar in 2024. “That has been a great way to meet people and get to know our community,” Spooner said. “You realize how wonderful this community is when you spend every weekend with them. People have been extremely supportive and appreciative.”
The Lumber Company provides a way to give back, too. “There are many organizations and causes that are worthy and deserve funding. Wendy and I are happy to host many of those organizations’ fundraisers at the Patagonia Lumber Company,” she said.
Beyond the aesthetic lift to Doc Mock Park, Spooner hopes that the Together We Fly sculpture will reinforce the power of art in the community.
“Art is already an important aspect of our community, so having permanent art installations to be enjoyed on a daily basis by our citizens and others who visit our community seems appropriate and natural,” she said.
Spooner believes that public art can encourage creativity and self-expression, inspire community pride and identity, strengthen social bonds and foster a sense of belonging. She hopes the Together We Fly sculpture will inspire additional art pieces in the park, whether sculptures or other types of artistic expression.
“We are a community who accomplishes great things together, as flight is only achieved by the cooperation of the group of feathers working together as one,” she said. “This sculpture is a mark we are making at this time in our history, of who we are: a community who comes together.”