Photography courtesy of USG&M staff - Spirit of Flight, 1959, Charles Umlauf. Bronze. The piece is a scale model of the 17-foot-high sculpture marking the entrance to Dallas' Love Field Airport. Spirit of Flight was the first piece Umlauf cast in Pietrasanta, Italy, using the centuries-old "lost wax" process. Beginning in 1960, Umlauf spent time each year working in Italian foundries to make full-sized castings of scale models he had prepared in Austin.

For gardeners, artwork is often the finishing touch that seals their expression to the garden. Charles Umlauf, internationally acclaimed sculptor, chose art first, and then built a garden around it.

At the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, flowers and fronds enfold sculptures along lazy paths cooled by a stream. Birdcalls accompany contemplation of a poignant Pieta, while a child's voice of delight prompts a moment to share tiny hands caressing a sleepy waxed bronze hippopotamus.

"Ours is an unusually young audience because of this friendliness of the garden, this garden frame that we have," says Nelie Plourde, museum director. She has watched many children get their first hands-on experience with sculpture since opening day in 1991.

But every audience discovers a relevant bond. Spirit of Flight attracts a small boy with its strength, while a new mother stops with her stroller at Hope for the Future. Historical religious figures and classic lovers join contemporaries like Skater, which captures Peggy Fleming in bronze. The museum features a rotating collection of Umlauf sculptures, from busts to full-size statues. A glass wall anchors the building to the garden. Visitors pondering an abstract in marble can look out onto the face of the cast stone War Mother clutching her baby under the trees.

Throughout his career, Umlauf, who died in 1994, portrayed the qualities of emotion he witnessed. "Umlauf was unusual because he worked in so many different kinds of materials, so many different styles and so many different themes," Plourde says. Figurative and abstract sculptures of bronze, cast stone, marble and wood reflect his traditional training melded with exploration of the world's changing scenery.

Umlauf came to Austin in 1941 to teach at the University of Texas for the next 40 years. In 1985, he and his wife, Angeline, now 90, gave the city of Austin their home and studio above Barton Springs Road as a life estate, along with 168 sculptures.

Below their hill, the city owned 4 acres once used as a dump. To build onto the Umlaufs' contribution, arts and parks patron Roberta Crenshaw raised funds to turn "the bird's nest on the ground" into a museum and sculpture garden.

With her firebrand energy,?vision?and dogged determination, Crenshaw mapped a plan to pair city ownership and contributions with private funds and operation. She died in February, but "the partnership she hammered out in the original contract has become a model for similar partnerships, like the Long Center," says Plourde.

In 1996, the Roberta Crenshaw Building opened as a learning center. Between tours and workshops, Plourde reserves the building for receptions and bridal parties. A catering kitchen accommodates private functions that ease the budgetary bottom line.

Crenshaw's?plan included a sculpture garden, akin to Umlauf's personal open-air gallery. When she saw that runoff down the hill collected in a stagnant low spot, she asked, "Why not have some sort of water feature?" She supervised crews to haul rocks from her ranch and built a recirculating waterfall that winds through the garden in a stream to form ponds at both ends.

Landscape architect Aan Coleman designed the garden with the directive to keep costs low and the plants as self-sustaining as possible. Volunteers brought in some plants from home. Since Coleman couldn't afford a complete makeover, she worked with escapees from the neighborhood, like nandinas that spare the hill's erosion. Ten years later, the Texas Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects presented her the Award of Excellence for a resourceful design that grows better every year.

She laid out paths to follow the stream and to curve around and through the garden's levels. Their gentle guidance under old trees presents opportunities for intimate, inward contemplation as well as a spacious view of sculptures from many heights and angles. Bridges and wide, compacted granite paths make navigation easy for wheelchairs and strollers.

Crenshaw and the Umlaufs placed the sculptures to stage a strategic visual experience with each. Animal figures and joyful babes rest at child height. Passionate bronzes, like Refugees II and John the Baptist, pull the visitor inward to the garden, while the young gleeful Diver at pond's edge launches a wider perspective. The Kiss, a bronze that Umlauf created in 1970, pulls the eye to the central pond. As viewers slowly circle the water, textured with Louisiana iris and water cannas, the sculpture fully reveals itself.

In the hottest sunny space, they placed a reclining Lazarus. Coming around the bend back into shade, full-size sculptures like Eve, mounted into the hill, draw the viewer's gaze upward. Her hands shield her eyes from God, but as a sharp angle of sunlight breaks through the trees, her pose seems aptly placed.

Often people tell Plourde that they like the new sculptures she has added. She responds, "We can't afford installation of new pieces, but the light has changed. There are more leaves on the trees or there are fewer leaves on the trees. Suddenly the sculpture looks altogether different. It's a changing exhibit, even though it actually doesn't change that much. Each sculpture has its magic moments throughout the year as the sun goes around."

Coleman's revolving pockets of color, like a shrimp plant framing Refugees, 1950, contribute to the perspective. Seasonally, the nandinas reflect light to dramatize the cast stone Mother and Child, 1950. "Suddenly all those red berries remind you that there's ground-up pink granite in the cast stone," Plourde observes.

Although the city contributes to garden maintenance, Plourde also counts on volunteers, including one-day helpers, who ready the garden for spring's bridal season and April's annual Garden Party. She hosts "Wine and Weed" evenings where after-work volunteers have fun, learn about plants and yank out the day's stress.

Other volunteers come weekly, like octogenarian Bob Brooking, who wipes the sculptures clean of spider webs and bird droppings. When volunteers Charlotte Boyle and Wanda Lancaster made temporary plant markers for an event, visitors liked it so much that Brooking is underwriting permanent ones.

Private and public commitment join hands to inspire artists and provide a sanctuary to reflect on love, joy and grief. It's where children can run their fingertips along a waxed bronze to feel Umlauf's legacy to them.

With laminated maps, they venture on a sculpture treasure hunt, receiving a prize when they find them all. But the true prize is the sculptures they remember on their next visit. "So many museums are 'be quiet, stand still, don't touch,' and here you can," Ploude says. "It's amazing at what a young age, 2 1/2 or 3, the kids are already recognizing the sculptures. Parents don't always realize how very visually attuned their kids are at such an early age."

Whether they're the art of Umlauf or of nature, the sculpture garden's treasures will be lucky when these young visitors return to enjoy and care for the museum far into the future.