Art doesn’t always have to sit still and look pretty. For Rifle resident Dan’O McCue, creativity means movement, utility and a second life for forgotten objects.

McCue specializes in functional art—lamps made from vases and pipes, windmills assembled from spoons and cookware, and coat racks fashioned from golf clubs. His work blends practicality with whimsy, offering buyers something they can use and enjoy.

“I started doing this when I retired around four years ago,” McCue said. “I needed something to do, to keep busy, so I do this.”

Originally from Wisconsin, McCue moved to Illinois for work and eventually settled in Colorado with his wife of nearly 45 years. He spent years working in water treatment for towns across the Western Slope, including Silt, Meeker and Rifle.

“I vacuumed duckweed out of the ponds in Rifle to keep them clean,” he said with a laugh.

Retirement gave McCue the time to pursue his long-held creative instincts. What began with small projects has grown into a full-fledged hobby of transforming other people’s cast-offs into one-of-a-kind pieces.

“I go to yard sales and thrift stores and pick some things up,” he said. “I’ll see a golf club and pick it up for a buck—it’s a great deal.”

His home workspace is filled with baggies of cabinet and door handles, drawers of screws and nails, and boxes of crystal bowls, golf clubs, and even unused keys, which he’s repurposed into a business card holder.

“I really got into making lamps with crystal bowls,” he said. “I like the way the crystal makes a pattern when it’s lit up. One of them has a colander on it, and that makes a nice one too.”

Some of McCue’s creations look like something entirely different than their parts suggest. One lamp, for example, features a green vase tilted diagonally with a trumpet mouthpiece on the bottom—resembling either a trumpet or a submarine, depending on the viewer.

“You can see it however you want to see it,” he said. “Once you buy it, it’s yours, and I like people seeing more than one thing in my art.”

Affordability is important to McCue, who tries to keep most of his pieces under $100.

“Everyone deserves something nice in their home,” he said.

That can be a challenge with rising lumber prices, especially for his golf club coat racks that rely on wood panels.

“Getting pieces of wood for art is getting harder,” he said. “The wooden golf clubs too—they’re going back up, because I think they’re coming back and people want them now, so the stores are catching on.”

Occasionally, McCue stumbles upon valuable pieces without realizing it until later.

“One of the vases for the lamps I made is valuable,” he said. “I’m always searching for antiques, like with silverware.”

He also builds prototypes to test new ideas. One such piece is a tomato cage wrapped in cedar planks with a solar-powered bulb inside.

“That way, it charges all day and then lights up at night,” McCue said.

Though that prototype lives in his backyard, it’s not for sale.

“I made that one with copper wiring, and when you reach in, you might hurt your hand,” he said. “For the next one, I’m going to use bicycle rings for the wood so they’ll just pop on, and you don’t need to worry about getting hurt.”

When not in his shop, McCue spends time with his wife and their new kitten, who has taken a particular liking to his long beard. He also explained the origin of his unusual first name.

“My parents never gave me a middle name, but they gave me a middle initial,” he said. “So everybody who knows me calls me Dan’O.”

McCue often attends local vendor events, including Rifle’s Third Thursday on Third Street, the farmers market and the upcoming Silt ‘Storical Steampunk Shindig in September.

“I think the idea I had for my art was, one, to keep my hands busy, but also because I thought they could be outside pieces and people could put flowers in them,” he said. “That was just my thought—you can do anything you want with it though.”

To learn more or purchase a piece, call McCue at 970-309-8044.