Archives for Bronze

Inspired by Nature

January 5, 2023 | by Sara Gilbert Frederick

After more than 40 years as an artist, Margery Torrey has sculpted a myriad of subjects. She’s done pigs, puffins, and people. She’s created eagles and antelope. She’s designed a full-on steeplechase scene with multiple horses racing for the prize. Until last summer, however, she had never sculpted a sailboat. Even so, she didn’t hesitate to accept the commission when it came. It was a request from the children of a dear friend and was intended to be a gift for their father’s 85th birthday. “When she asked me about it, his daughter said, ‘We know it’s not what you
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Poignant Moments

November 3, 2022 | by Brandon Rosas

Colorado-based low relief sculptor J.D. (Jeremiah) Welsh spent much of the past year working in secret. The award-winning member of the National Sculpture Society (NSS) is no stranger to producing complex works on tight deadlines, but he poured many months and 23 years’ worth of skill into one special, small object: the Brookgreen Medal. “I honestly never thought I’d have the chance to do it,” Welsh says of the medal, which honors the prestigious Brookgreen Gardens sculpture garden in South Carolina and is presented to artists who ear the Anna Huntington Hyatt Award at the NSS’ annual awards exhibition. It
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Turning Chaos Into Order

September 1, 2022 | by Robyne Robinson

When Evelyn Tennyson, owner of Two Old Crows Gallery in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, asked Dave LaMure to create a monumental sculpture in honor of her late husband’s passion—trout fishing—he hesitated before giving her a de!nite answer. “I said, ‘Let me research it,'” he recalls. LaMure was so focused on the unique vessels he was making that he wasn’t sure he wanted to take time away from those creations to take on a trout commission. That changed as he began his research and became hooked on the story of the Native Cutthroat Trout, which was thought to be extinct for 70
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Boundless Talent, Boundless Energy

June 30, 2022 | by Vicki Stavig

Star Liana York’s energy knows no bounds. Neither does her talent. She’s not only been creating award-winning sculptures for more than four decades, she also owns and runs a ranch with her husband and operates an Airbnb. After competing in horse events and breeding and training horses for many years, she has set that aside. There are, after all, only so many hours in a day, most of which York fills with creating magnificent sculptures that have earned her countless awards and are treasured by collectors. York’s monumental sculptures are placed at sites throughout the country that include the Smithsonian
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Sudden Inspiration

May 1, 2022 | by Robyne Robinson

Tim Whitworth gets lost in creating. Ideas for a sculpture can overtake him at any minute, setting his mind in motion on every facet of its design. “I can be driving down the highway, and if I see something I’ll ask myself, ’Now, how do I put that into 3D?’” he says. “I’ll go through it in my mind.” That sudden inspiration also has its drawbacks. “Sometimes I get an idea about a piece,” Whitworth says. “I’ll get it designed, go through the process—design what it will look like, create the patina – then maybe won’t do it. I’ll do
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The Studio of Ed Mell

May 1, 2022 | by Myrna Zanetell

For more than four decades, Arizona-based painter, Ed Mell, has charmed the public with his vibrant images of the Sonoran Desert and the Colorado Plateau. The beauty and veracity of his paintings give testimony to his love of his native surroundings. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Mell grew up in what was then just a small desert oasis, leaving when he enrolled in the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, California. After completing his courses in 1967, he accepted a position with a large advertising firm in New York City. A year later, he and a friend started their
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Putting Marrow In The Bones

March 1, 2022 | by Clover Neiberg

“I used to sit at Clark’s desk and draw. Who does that?” Acclaimed Western sculptor Richard Greeves is reminiscing about his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, and yes, he’s talking about that Clark: Captain William Clark, of Lewis and Clark. Greeves’ childhood home, a stone’s throw from the Louisiana Purchase celebration grounds, afforded him the opportunity to serve as an unpaid gofer at the Missouri History Museum where he would rummage through the archives and make himself comfortable on the explorers’ furniture. “Back in those days, nobody thought much about it,” he says with a laugh. “They just thought of
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Finishing Touches: An Interview With Erik Petersen

March 1, 2022 | by Lisa Staudohar

Artists often have interesting backgrounds most of us never hear about or read about. Erik Petersen is one of them. Many notable sculptors—such as Susan Kliewer and Kim Kori—started out working at bronze foundries. Deborah Copenhaver Fellows started her own foundry, while Kim Obrzut did much of her own foundry work when she first began to cast bronzes. Ken Rowe, a well-known taxidermist, is very hands-on during the bronze process as is John Coleman who even did his own patinas. Read the full article in the March/April 2022 issue. Photo courtesy of Willie Petersen
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‘This is My Life’

January 1, 2022 | by Brandon Rosas

Sculptor Chris Hunt has dislocated each of his shoulders at least four times and broken both clavicles, both scapulae, and a couple of ribs. The Texas-born artist and former Air Force senior airman has always jumped feet first into new things, be it riding in rodeos or introducing a new medium to his repertoire. “‘No fear’ was my mantra, and still is to this day,” he says. Hunt grew up in Damon, Texas, on a ranch on the Brazos River, where he was raised by his father Maurice and had no problem amusing himself by drawing, fishing, hunting, and riding
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A Master In His Prime

January 1, 2022 | by Todd Wilkinson

George Carlson has never subscribed to any “ism.” As the only person in history to be honored with the Prix de West Purchase Award—the top prize in Western Art—in two different media, he also has never seen himself as a “Western artist,” at least not in the way it has celebrated iconic landscapes, cowboys, and indigenous people. But Carlson does believe in a way of seeing that is articulated by many, going back to the ancient Greeks. It is embraced by American master realist Andrew Wyeth and by Carlson’s friend, painter Robert Lougheed. Their maxim is this: Nature provides all
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