22 Oct Whimsical Garden Sculptures

Garden Guardian. 2002
Steel.
Private Collection

These three sculptures are early examples of sculpture based on line art drawings. The Guardian sculpture is one of the few I’ve done which combines lines and planes.

Turning a drawing into a sculpture is a bit tricky. As simple as the end result looks, it only works if all the lines connect in some way— you can’t just hang a piece of steel in space. It also helps to consider the nature of the material… steel likes to bend in certain ways, and although you can force it to do whatever you want, I find that if you work with it, it will naturally produce very clean, subtle curves that are well suited to graceful and nuanced drawings.

These first efforts were influenced somewhat by petroglyphs and doodles. Since then, I’ve refined this style of sculpture into a more gestural,  narrative format seen in my Acrobats, Dancers  and fences.

Mermaid, 2003:
steel,
Private Collection

Tag!, 2003:
steel,
Private Collection