The Studio of Walter Matia

Maryland sculptor, Walter Matia, is a practical and pragmatic businessman; he has to be. “Sculpture is a business; you can’t treat it like a hobby,” he says. “There’s way too much money involved and too many things to keep track of.”

Becoming a sculptor was a natural step for Matia. From the time he was 16 until he was 23, he worked at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, alongside the exhibit staff. “I also worked with a taxidermist there, Larry Isard, who was also a sculptor, so I learned a lot about animal anatomy,” he says.

The museum’s art collection also included several sculptures by Albert Laessle (1877-1945), who became Matia’s muse. “[Laessle] made powerful observations about mundane moments,” he says. “[The superiority of] his textures and his mastery of gestures were my inspiration.”

Matia picked up the business aspect of sculpting during his 12-year tenure at the Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia, where he rose to vice president of land management. “I learned the really critical skills of running a business,” he says. “It’s not just enough to have a good product; you have to know how to get it in front of people. Once you’re in front of them, you have to know how to engage them.”

Today, Matia runs his sculpture business out of a 1,500-square-foot studio, a warehouse bay in Maryland with an office at the back. He purchased the studio in 2002 to accommodate a commission for a monumental sculpture. The McNair family, owners of the Houston Texans football team, commissioned him to create three one-and-a-half-sized Spanish bull torsos to adorn the stadium. That project took up 1,300 feet of his studio space.

Read the full article in the September/October 2026 issue.