Robert R. Bruno Jr. (January 30, 1945 – December 9, 2008) was an American artist, inventor, and businessman. In 1982, he designed and created one of the first solar-powered surge irrigation systems for row crops and founded P&R Surge Systems with his wife Patricia Mills. As an artist, he designed jewelry, furniture, and numerous sculptures both large and small. He is perhaps most widely recognized for the artistic steel house that sits on the edge of the jagged caprock escarpment that overlooks

Yellow House Canyon Yellow House Canyon is about long, heading in Lubbock, Texas, at the junction of Blackwater Draw and Yellow House Draw, and trending generally southeastward to the edge of the Llano Estacado about east of Slaton, Texas; it forms one of three ma ...

in the residential community of

Ransom Canyon Ransom Canyon is a town in Lubbock County of West Texas, United States. The population was 1,096 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Lubbock Metropolitan Statistical Area. Geography The town of Ransom Canyon is located within Yellow House Canyo ...

a few miles east of

Lubbock, Texas Lubbock ( ) is the 10th-most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of government of Lubbock County. With a population of 260,993 in 2021, the city is also the 85th-most populous in the United States. The city is in the northw ...

Biography

Robert R. Bruno was born January 30, 1945, in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. He was the son of Robert R. Bruno Sr. and Delores Puig and he had two sisters, Kathleen and Diane. He spent his early years shuttling between divorced parents in the United States and Mexico. He attended Dominican College in

Racine, Wisconsin Racine ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River. Racine is situated 22 miles (35 km) south of Milwaukee and approximately 60 ...

, a now-defunct Catholic college, and continued to graduate school at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

. At Dominican College, he began working with steel and completed numerous steel sculptures, some of which were installed in the backyard of his grandparents’ home in Vista, California. At Dominican College he met Patricia Mills, a Catholic student on track to become a nun. They were married and soon moved to

, so that he could teach art and design at the School of Architecture at

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on , and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the main institution of the five-institution Texas Tech University Sys ...

. They had one child, a daughter named Christina.

Business career

During the 1970s, Bruno taught at Texas Tech while his wife worked at the High Plains Underground Water District, an organization charged with protecting and conserving precious groundwater resources across a large portion of the

Llano Estacado The Llano Estacado (), sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North A ...

. Prior to the development of center pivot irrigation, cropland was typically watered by

furrow irrigation Surface irrigation is where water is applied and distributed over the soil surface by gravity. It is by far the most common form of irrigation throughout the world and has been practiced in many areas virtually unchanged for thousands of years. S ...

, a rather inefficient method that resulted in considerable water losses due to evaporation and uneven infiltration. In 1979, an improved method of “ surge irrigation” was developed by Stringham and Keller (1979). Learning of this new technology, Robert Bruno developed a surge valve system and the couple formed an irrigation company called P&R Surge Systems (the name being derived from their first initials). The company was successful and provided additional financial support for his art.

Art

While teaching at Texas Tech University, Bruno completed a large steel sculpture that later became the inspiration for the Steel House at Ransom Canyon. It is in front of the Architecture Building. Bruno began construction of the Steel House in 1973. This three-level house was constructed of numerous pieces of scrap steel carefully welded together forming an enormous curving form. It is estimated to weigh 110 tons and rests on four hollow legs anchored to the eastern rim of

. The steel house has many large smoothly curving windows, some composed of

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

while others provide a panoramic view of Lake Ransom Canyon, below. It remained unfinished at his death; there were to have been a library and an aquarium inside the steel legs.Darla Guillen
"A look inside sculptor Robert Bruno's legendary 'Steel House' in Texas"
''Houston Chronicle'', May 28, 2015, via ''San Francisco Chronicle''. In 1991, Mark Lawson asked him to design another house to occupy a nearby vacant lot in Ransom Canyon. This house would be constructed of stone and tile instead of steel. Bruno, Rick Denser (general contractor), Manfred Kaiter (master stone mason), and Lawson started work on the rock house in 1991. It was inspired by the work of Antoni Gaudi. File:Bruno sculpture dedication TTU 2015.jpg, Dedication of the Robert Bruno Sculpture and Plaza at Texas Tech University, April 20, 2015 File:Ransom Canyon Steel House on rim of Yellow House Canyon 2009.jpg, Robert Bruno's Steel House overlooking the rim at Ransom Canyon File:Lawson Castle in Ransom Canyon, TX IMG 0162.JPG, The Lawson Rock House in Ransom Canyon

References

External links

* * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bruno, Robert R. 1945 births 2008 deaths Artists from Los Angeles People from Lubbock, Texas Dominican College of Racine alumni Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters alumni Texas Tech University faculty Llano Estacado Sculptors from California Sculptors from Texas 20th-century American inventors