Goats in the Garden

POSTED: Friday, May 2, 2025

She’s hot; she’s tired. She hasn’t sat down for a minute all day.
The children have not been quiet…
The husband has gone to town for seed. He won’t be back till dark. 
There’s enough water left in the bucket for her to wash her hands 
so she can fix something for the children.
She looks out the window at the beautiful garden…and
Heavens to Betsy! If it hasn’t been bad enough,
there are Goats in the Garden.

~

This is dedicated to Joan Spieler for her vision of what this place could be.
Thank you to everyone who has helped make Joan’s vision a reality.

-Joyce Jones

Goats in the Garden, a seven-foot, 1200-pound monument by Bruce Greene, debuted at the entrance of the Bosque Arts Center during the Big Event in April. Roland and Joyce Jones commissioned and donated the statue—a life-size remake of a bronze Bruce had done while serving as the artist-in-residence in the BAC’s early days.

Joyce Jones said the donation was “to honor the people that prepared the West for the rest of us.”

“I was dusting some of the sculptures off one day and I looked at the original Goats  in Garden. I thought, Hmm wouldn’t that look good if it were 5 feet tall? So I called Bruce. 

“‘Have you ever thought about Goats in the Garden being 5 feet tall?’

“He said, ‘Actually, I have not.’”

“I said, ‘Well, think about it and call me.’ It took a while.”

Joyce finally won Bruce over.  “She’d be impressive,” she told him, “and it would be a beautiful tribute to all those women that left their homes in Pennsylvania and Boston…wagons and horses and going who knows where. They had faith that it would be something they could live with.

“They would have had to pry me out of Boston with a crowbar,” she said.

“Can you imagine getting in a covered wagon to go...where? So think about them when you see Bruce’s sculpture and say a little ‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’”

Before she turned the mike over to Bruce, Joyce closed her speech with a story of her grandfather who was born and raised in Alabama before coming to Texas.

“He always said grace, and he always said the same thing. And I asked him one time, ‘Poppy why do you always say the same grace?’ He said, ‘Because the grace I say says it all.’

“And his grace was ‘God bless Texas.’”

Bruce spoke of the process from his point of view. In the middle of it, his triceps tore loose from his elbow and he was unable to work for months.

“But she’d call me every once in a while and she’d say, ‘You know, don’t know how long I’m going to be around.’

“No pressure,” he said, laughing.

Bruce closed the dedication by expressing his gratitude to the Joneses and all they have meant to him and to all the other artists they have supported over the years by building their collection of art.

“There’s no way I can express to you the gratitude I have for Roland and Joyce…What a treasure they are.”

He listed other thanks: his assistant Jeff Gottfried; John Linn, Michael Gray, Joe Gary, and Francisco Luna who helped with the installation; Leanne Donner and Nancy Harvard; wife Janie, granddaughter Ellie, and Hali Bell for modeling for the woman; and MaryAnn Brandenberger for Myrtle and Pearl—the two goats that spent time in his studio.

“Do you have any idea what kind of mess goats will make in the studio?” Bruce added.

A last note on gratitude, Bruce told the story of an early mentor, the late Fritz White, guiding the process of the first Goats in the Garden sculpture.

“He tore it in half. He literally walked up to it and split it in half.

“To quote: ‘I thought I told you she wants to kill the d___ goats.’

“He wanted that anger and that passion to be expressed in this thing.”

Bruce let the audience in on a note he has posted in his studio, Acts 20:22, that speaks of being compelled by the Spirit.

“And so when I go in there, that is my first function--to be compelled by the spirit to do what I do.”

Goats in the Garden is now on display at the entrance of the Bosque Arts Center at 215 S. College Hill Drive in Clifton, TX.

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