When Joe Lemon looks at a pile of rusty, old scrap metal, he sees flowers and butterflies.

Overly idealistic? Not really. Because upon first glance at his finished product, that's exactly what you'll see as well. Only a closer look will reveal that the flowers are really just discarded fan blades, the butterflies the heads of old shovels.

Joe Lemon is an artist, and he possesses the ability to transform junk into treasure.

Armed with arc welders, cutting torches and a variety of other tools, Lemon can take anything from car parts to gardening implements and create a metal masterpiece. Metal flowers, fish and lizards in every color of the rainbow adorn Lemon's front yard.

"We couldn’t get any real flowers to grow," he chuckles. But that’s not a problem now. The "flowers" are growing right along with Lemon’s talent.

Joe Lemon was born in 1956 in Douglas, Ariz., the oldest of four children. As a child, he was more interested in rodeos and ranching than art. He was always very in tune with the natural world around him - the world he would later use as inspiration for many of his pieces.

He moved to Artesia in 1984 to work for Halliburton Energy Services. During that time, he dabbled a little in metal-working but spent most of his time traveling back and forth to Arizona, tending to his family’s ranch and his cowboy duties.

It wasn’t until 1998 that he began concentrating on his art form. "It’s been a growth process," he says. "I didn’t have enough time in the past, with working and traveling and ranching, to work on pieces, but now they’ve become the main focus."

The distribution end of Lemon’s art has followed the same pattern, going from creating pieces for his own home on weekends to creating prototypes for a mass-production deal that is currently in the works. "It started out as a hobby and just went from there," he says, motioning to his very first piece, which still sits by his front steps. Unlike most people’s hobbies, however, Lemon’s has now evolved into a lucrative small business.

In 1999, Lemon started a home-based company around his artwork with his wife, Teresa, and 1-year-old daughter, Maegan.

JMT Dragon Tails (the JMT standing for both "Joe, Maegan and Teresa" and "Junk Makes Treasure") was created to lend a name to the business Lemon’s art had become as he toured craft shows around New Mexico and Texas.

Public interest in his artwork was evident, and his pieces are now sold at the craft mall in Clovis, as well as specialty shops in Silver City and Bisbee, Ariz.

"It’s gratifying when someone’s willing to buy one of the pieces," Lemon says. "The fact that they like it is just as important as the sale." The artistic quality of his pieces is definitely not lost on the buyers, either, as everyone seems to find something different that appeals to them in Lemon’s art.

"I’ve tried not to be judgmental about the pieces, because I’ve found that even when I’m not pleased with one, someone else likes it," he says. "Each piece is individual and can relate to people on an individual level."

As for what originally appealed to him in the prospect of constructing metal art, Lemon says that’s relatively simple. "We just needed stuff for the yard...we needed some color." And colorful is the perfect description for both his pieces and his methods.

"You start with a vision of what you want the finished piece to look like," Lemon says of the earliest stage of the creative process.

"As you go along, though, the piece just sort of evolves by itself, and sometimes it ends up looking nothing like what you had in mind when you started." Tables loaded down with bits of scrap metal sit outside his workshop, awaiting his inspection.

"If you can see something in a particular piece of metal, that’s what you try to work for," he notes, but modestly imparts that sometimes the process is more a science of dimensions than pure art. "It’s all just a question of trial-and-error and experience. If something doesn’t fit or look right, you just take it off and try again. That’s the nice thing about working with metal - it can always be recycled."

Pure art, however, always shines through in Lemon’s pieces. He takes most of his inspiration directly from nature, but an element of fantasy usually comes into play before he’s done. "Every piece of metal has its own personality, so you have to blend that with reality to come up with what you want the piece to say. Because of that, it sometimes resembles something more animated than realistic."

Lemon’s talents are not limited to the cartoonish flowers and smiling bugs that have become his trademark, however. Some of his other pieces include birds mounted on suspension springs that allow them to sway realistically in the breeze, impressive underwater scenes cut out of the tops of 55-gallon drums, and cacti made from old horseshoes.

His metal menagerie is not limited to his own visions, either — Lemon creates some pieces on demand, letting customers have personal input on how they’d like a piece to look.

Lemon hopes to continue creating metal art well into the future. "It’s a work in progress," he reflects. "I’m not sure where it will go from here. I started doing it because it was fun and interesting, and that’s still the main reason I’m doing it, so as long as other people are interested, too, I’ll continue with it."

Anyone wishing to obtain more information about Lemon’s artwork may call his home at 748-2459 or visit his website at: