Folk art 'Garden of Gethsemane' by Felix Lucero

Tucson’s park features the work of Felix Lucero, an untrained artist who spent years molding the riverbed statues.

Lucero died in 1951, at the age of 56.

In 1947, he told a Star reporter that his work was the result of a promise he made to God while lying wounded on a French battlefield during World War I.

After moving to Tucson in 1938, Lucero began molding his religious statues from damp riverbed sand. He lived in a cardboard-and-plywood shack beneath the then two-lane Congress Street bridge.

“His work was more visible than he was,” said Matt Perri, 62, who grew up about a block away from where the sculpture park is now.