In Seward, Nebraska, a life-size replica of a 1913 Curtiss Model D Pusher airplane was recently displayed at the Nebraska National Guard Museum.

Eight-hundred miles away in Durango, its twin is suspended, as if in flight, from the ceiling of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad museum on Main Avenue.

The maker of both models, Dave Claussen, is a little-known sculptor who has lived in Durango since 1972.

People may not know it, but if they’ve driven past the giant, steel pinecones perched at the east entrance of Edgemont Highlands, they’ve seen Claussen’s work.

“I’m into realism,” Claussen said. “I like things that look like things. I don’t like exaggerated work or static displays, but things that look like they’re moving.”

Last week, Claussen paraded with the people of Seward, “America’s Small Town 4th of July City,” for an Independence Day themed in celebration of 100 years of aviation in Nebraska.

A century earlier, on Sept. 2, 1916, 27-year-old Nebraska National Guard Capt. Ralph McMillen died when he crashed his 1913 Curtiss Pusher in St. Francis, Kansas.

The connection to Durango?

Three years earlier, the same aircraft, on its maiden voyage and piloted by McMillen, was the first plane to sweep over the city of Durango.

When the Nebraska National Guard discovered that in 2013 Claussen had built a similar model, they recruited him to do it once again for the Nebraska museum. It was completed in about 10 weeks.

Durango is rife with artists whose work hangs in galleries along Main Avenue, is pushed at craft shows and adorns homes throughout the county. Claussen’s work, built mainly with metal and wood, is a bit more enduring and industrial.

Formerly a builder like his father, Claussen, 65, had taken a few welding classes and started making stone sculptures in 1978, eventually moving on to using metal and wood. Attached to being his own boss, he’s been able to sustain himself on commissioned work ever since. He’s built commissioned sculptures for Pine River Valley Bank, Alamosa State Bank and businesses around the country. He’s built life-size horses, metal acorns, a dress for a women’s hospital in Fort Worth. Lately he’s modeled old Volkswagens.

He likes to build things to last.

“My dad was a builder and developer, but a lot of the stuff he built in the ’50s isn’t there anymore,” Claussen said. “Hopefully my work will be around longer than I am.”

The idea for his masterwork, the Pusher, came to him literally in a dream.

“It sounds corny, but I had a dream about building a plane for the train museum,” Claussen said. He approached the owner, Al Harper, not realizing that it was the Narrow Gauge Railroad that hauled McMillen’s Curtiss Pusher into Durango in 1913. In fact, Harper had been wanting a model airplane in the museum for years.

“I had talked to several people who built model aircraft,” Harper said. “I was so impressed by his creativity, and it was a great opportunity to have a local artist do something so significant for our museum.”

McMillen bought his Pusher in San Diego for about $6,000. The train hauling it to Nebraska made a stop in Durango, where McMillen flew it for the locals in the Colorado-New Mexico Fair. Harper has a photo of the aircraft where it took off from Fort Lewis Mesa.

Claussen used parts, including a carburetor from the OX Aviation Pioneers Club in Troy, Ohio, to make the Durango museum’s model as realistic as possible, and referenced blueprints from the Glenn H. Curtiss Aviation Museum in Hammondsport, New York, to assemble the 700-pound aircraft of wood, canvas and cables.

The art is in the imprecisions – an expert eye would note that the pilot’s seat is situated too far in front of the aircraft.

The model took three months to build, with a crew of about 10 people ages 15 to 84, Claussen said.

When finished, the plane was hauled into the railroad museum in three parts, assembled and hoisted to its current position – 100 years after the real thing soared over Durango.

For his next work, Claussen said a P-51 Mustang – a World War II single-seat fighter bomber – may be on the horizon. But right now, he’s in the ebb mode of his work cycle, free to travel, as he likes to do, until he’s ready to return to his studio at the Animas Air Park.

“I don’t want to retire,” Claussen said. “I think if I retired, I’d want to get a shop and build sculptures – and I already have that. So I’ll probably do this until I’m 100, then maybe I’ll slow down.”

jpace@durangoherald.com