Current Projects
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Great Blue Heron
The Great Blue Heron was inspired by the marvelous enthusiasm that people showed for my sculpture at the Make-A-Wish fundraising event last winter (2012). I was moved to create something this year that represented the spirit of Make-A-Wish, which I consider awe-inspiring. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a Great Blue Heron, you know how this creature’s grace, [...]
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Christmas Tree
This is my “Partridge in a Pear Tree – and Squirrel” sculpture from 2012. I donated this to a festival in our town where people donate decorated Christmas trees and then at a party one evening before the holidays, they auction off the various trees. My tree had a cute partridge on tip toe, hovering joyfully on the top [...]
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Beaver
This is an idea I had after touring a modern art museum in Washington D.C. in the summer of 2012. I was inspired by the work of Alexander Calder who had a knack for keeping it simple, while knocking the essence of every piece out of the ballpark. The beaver is made from one piece of flat stock steel. I [...]
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Lady of the lake house
The “Lady of the Lake House” is a sculpture I made for a wedding present for some very special friends of our family. They had a beautiful collection of copper pots but nowhere to display them when they were not being used. So when we asked them what they needed, they suggested that I make them a simple pyramid-shaped pot [...]
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Little owl server
October 6th 2012: This sculpture is the little sister to the larger “Mother and Babies Wine and Hors d’oeuvre Server”. After my family fell in love with the larger version, we realized that we could never give it away… so at around 9:30 am, the morning of the event that I had committed to donate a sculpture to (St. Albans [...]
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Mother and Babies Wine and Hors d’oeuvre Server
October 5th 2012: This is one of my favorite pieces yet! This sculpture was one of the few that people have watched me make. My grandmother had come to see us from my parent’s home town of Lincoln Illinois. She wanted to see me weld and we couldn’t refuse. The idea for the sculpture came to me when I was dumpster diving in the metal bins [...]
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Cow Bike Rack
The cows are my eleventh piece and were completed on June 8th 2012, – one week before I graduated from the 8th grade. This was my most complex work to-date because of the need for the cows to be painted. (My normal “junkyard metal” medium would have been dangerous and dirty for cyclists to brush up against.) It was also [...]
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Raven for Gallery
DECEMBER 2011: This piece came to me in quite a sudden burst of inspiration one fall afternoon, when a large raven flew right past my window. Coincidentally, I had been reading a book about the natural history of ravens and was marveled by their cleverness. I rushed out to my studio and as luck would have it I found the [...]
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Self-Portrait
APRIL 2012: My mother and I took an advanced welding course at the local high school with a number of fellows who would be using their welding skill as their life’s work. We were simply taking the course to expand the kind of metal that we might use in our sculptures. Each night of the course, mom and I would [...]
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Scrap owl for side
March 2012: When I was asked to make a piece to donate to the Make-A-Wish fundraiser, I suffered from some “welders-block” (like “writer’s block”, but hotter!), because I am accustomed to having at least a thread of a theme to start with for most of my pieces. When nothing came to me, I stared at the shop floor in deep [...]
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Cyclops dog for gallery
MARCH 2012: The dog was created in much the same way as my self portrait. I found a piece in the scrap bin at my welding class that looked to me like the muzzle of a dog and then another that would work for its body! I went to work and 2 hours later we had a dog! (I think [...]
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bug server
OCTOBER 2011: This sculpture holds an ice-bucket for wine (or beverages), and has a place to put a platter of hors d’oeuvre. I imagine this type of useful sculpture would be out in people’s yards, or on their deck, between their two favorite chairs… Somewhere that people might sit a while and enjoy a nice view or conversation over a [...]