collecting resource guide collecting contemporary sculpture · of fort collins. the house sits near...

Collecting Contemporary

Sculpture Southwest Art Sculpture Artists to Watch

ColleCting ResouRCe guide

Steve Kestrel, The Quorum, bronze, 12 x 17 x 5.

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Letting Nature LeadColorado sculptor Steve Kestrel turns river and field stones into elegant wildlife portraits

b y M a R k M u s s a R i

When he was 24 years old, Steve Kestrel decided to hitchhike across the western United States. An aspiring sculp-tor, he had dropped out of college and was in need of some direction. While in New Mexico, he stumbled upon a maga-zine article about Georgia O’Keeffe and became determined to meet the famed Southwestern artist. Call it the audacity of youth, but Kestrel arrived in the town of Abiquiu, where O’Keeffe lived, and sauntered right up to her gate.

“She happened to be outside, but she was very unfriendly,” he recalls. “So I left and hitchhiked a little farther.” Yet something drew him back to the home of the inter-nationally renowned figure. “I thought to myself, ‘Dammit, she owes young artists an explanation.’” This time, to his great sur-prise, O’Keeffe invited Kestrel to dinner, and the two spent hours discussing art.

And so, in a way, Kestrel ended up go-ing home to start over. He was born in Alamogordo, NM, to a father who was a country physician and a mother who was a nurse. Although he was raised in the center of the small town, his family

Run River Run, bronze, 15 x 29 x 5.

kept horses at a nearby ranch owned by some friends. “I hiked and rode horses in the mountains of southern New Mexico,” he remembers. “I drew a fair amount, but basically I was interested in wildlife.” By the time Kestrel was 11 years old, his fam-ily had purchased some acreage northeast of town to keep their own horses.

The first art that Kestrel ever recalls seeing was a pair of “glorious” murals by Peter Hurd gracing the walls of the pueblo-style Alamogordo post office. The paintings depicted a man and woman rancher and an older Hispanic man irri-gating a field. “Those murals really spoke to me visually,” he explains. Still, he took no art classes in school. “By high school, I thought I would become a veterinarian,” he observes. To that end, he began stud-ies as a natural sciences major at East-ern New Mexico University, eventually transferring to Colorado State University. “I was happy with most of the science classes,” he admits, “but organic chemis-try was my downfall.”

After Kestrel’s maternal grandparents died, his mother showed him a letter he

had written to them when he was 19. “In it I had told them that I wanted to be a sculptor,” he remembers. Surprised at the discovery, he decided to change his major to fine arts and to focus on sculpting. “I used to do a lot of hiking and would see geological formations and Native Ameri-can artifacts,” he comments. “So I had always been fascinated by paleontology and fossils. I was particularly interested in stone, but no one at CSU carved in stone.” To make matters worse, Kestrel became disillusioned by the art history courses he took: “It was all memorization and dates—there was no context for what was going on at the time,” he explains. With only nine credits to go, he dropped out of college and began the hitchhiking trip that led him to New Mexico.

After his life-changing conversation with O’Keeffe, Kestrel continued to move around, living in both Hawaii and Ameri-can Samoa. In time, he started drawing again and began to make furniture and to build houses in New Mexico and Idaho. When Kestrel met his wife, Cindi, he says his life became more focused. In 1980, the

all photos by Jafe paRsons


couple settled in Santa Fe—a block away from famed stone carver Boris Gilbert-son. “He was a wonderful person and a mentor,” recalls Kestrel. “I worked in his studio for two years after his death, even using his old equipment.”

Influenced by Gilbertson, Kestrel de-cided to turn his attention full-force to carving directly into stone. “My main interest has been field and river stones,” he notes. “Quarried stone doesn’t interest me.” He lauds the varieties of shape, con-tour, and color inherent in these harder stones. “It’s always surprising once you cut into them,” he adds. In 1982, Kestrel committed himself to becoming a full-time sculptor—though he waited a solid year before approaching any galleries with his work.

Kestrel cites the stone carvings of sculptors John B. Flannagan and William Zorach as early influences on his work, and he nods to the three-dimensional creations of Constantine Brancusi, Rob-ert Laurent, and Jose DeCreeft as inspira-tional. “My central focus has been animal images,” he observes. “I’ve been a conser-vationist since I was a kid, long before it became trendy.” To that end, he says that his work is an attempt to “take the empha-sis off human-centered thinking—to have people understand the natural world.”

KeStrel doeS not use any wax or clay models in his artistic process. “I draw right onto the stone and then start carving,” he explains. He refers to this approach as “di-rect carving.” Once he chooses a stone, he decides how each mental image will fit that stone. He begins by drawing each image in chalk until he is satisfied with it and then switches to a permanent marker or grease pencil. “The color of a river stone usually changes after breaking through the exteri-or surface,” he confirms. “Unexpected dry cracks show up; textures change. Many variables may open up, inspiring new di-rections during the carving process.”

The artist surrenders freely to these un-expected twists and turns: “The trick is to be sensitive to these possibilities and use them to enhance the final carving,” he says. Along the way, he might emphasize a dif-ferent line, deepen a shadow, experiment with texture, or change the volume of a form—whatever the material dictates. “For me, that’s a great part of the magic, beauty, and excitement of the carving process,”

Auroch Echoes, black granite, 33 x 28 x 22.

he insists. “You’re solving both aesthetic and practical problems. It’s challenging yet rewarding, because you end up doing things you wouldn’t do with a quarry block. And it’s never redundant. It’s not like making a model and then repeating it.”

One can sense the strong relationship between the medium and the shapes

in all of Kestrel’s creations. His fe-alty to his materials results in elegant, stylized forms—at times bordering on abstraction—that emerge from each stone. Animals curve sensuously into ovoid shapes, faces appear mask-like, and creatures seem to rise in subtle re-lief from the very texture of a rock. An

Salient Dirge, granophyre/slate/quartzite, 10 x 32 x 11.


Gator Egg, fieldstone, 17 x 18 x 13.

artistic marriage occurs between the stones and the artist’s hand, drawing the viewer’s attention back to the natural material. For example, two cranes unite in a stylized circle, emphasizing the stone’s smoothness, while a dark river stone sliced in two reveals a baby beaver in a nest. “I don’t approach my subject matter from only one point of view,” he explains. “I’m always exploring tangents. It’s very intuitive.”

For his mammoth piece SILENT MES-SENGER, Kestrel carved a six-foot-long sarcophagus out of Colorado red sand-

stone and then placed his sculpture of a five-foot-long black granite raven, lying on its back, inside the box. “I usually cel-ebrate the earth’s flora and fauna in my work,” observes the sculptor, “but with this piece I mourn the destruction and degradation of ecosystems worldwide and the tragic loss of unique animal spe-cies.” In both form and material, Kestrel juxtaposes the black granite raven—“an icon associated with nature and ancient creation myths”—and the red sandstone sarcophagus, “symbolizing the quest for dominance and control over the natural

world.” With its separate lid resting on a diagonal, the metaphorical sculpture func-tions more like an installation than an in-dividual piece. The effect is chilling. “In the next century,” asks Kestrel, “will our societies and artists celebrate the remain-ing wildlife or mourn their passing?”

Another recent piece is powerful in its own way. In AUROCH ECHOES [see page 3], a block of black granite seems to give birth to a bull. Like Athena rising full-grown from the head of Zeus, the bull emerges not only as a mature form in its own right but as a force emanating from the gran-ite. The bull’s hind quarters merge into the dark stone, reinforcing its material origins. In GATOR EGG, a rough fieldstone egg appears to have cracked open, reveal-ing a newborn alligator nestled within the shell. In both pieces one can sense the art-ist’s inclination to work with the inherent power of each stone, using natural forms to carve figures at one with their medium.

Today, Kestrel resides in a home he de-signed with his wife and helped to build in Colorado’s Redstone Canyon area, outside of Fort Collins. The house sits near Red-stone Creek, where he culls many of the stones used in his direct carvings. “I also converted a 3,400-square-foot old barn on the property into a fully operating, heated and insulated studio,” he says. His wife Cindi keeps the books for him; he still re-fers to her as his greatest inspiration.

Kestrel is a member of the National Sculpture Society and the Society of Ani-mal Artists. His sculpture has twice won Best of Show at the annual Coors West-ern Art Exhibit and Sale in Denver, which opens this month; he is the featured art-ist this year. He is a longtime participant in other shows as well, including the Prix de West Invitational and the Buffalo Bill Art Show. His works are also in the collec-tions of numerous museums, including the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Wyo-ming, the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, and the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma.

It’s safe to say that O’Keeffe would be quite proud of the young man she invited in for dinner all those years ago. Through her time and generosity, the grande dame of Southwestern art inspired another New Mexico artist to fulfill his dreams. F

Mark Mussari, who also writes for LUXE and Phoenix Home & Garden, is the author of numerous educa-tional books and journal articles.

this content has been abridged from an original article written by Mark Mussari. © f+W. all rights reserved. f+W grants permission for any or all pages in this premium to be copied for personal use.


Circle of LifeFrom field to fine art with Colorado sculptor dan ostermiller

b y R o s e M a R y C a R s t e n s

AS FAr bACK as the Middle Ages, men have practiced the art of alchemy—a mixture of chemistry, philosophy, and mysticism. Their mission was to find a magical means for transmuting common substances into gold. They were unsuc-cessful, but the concept of transforming common materials into extraordinary new objects remains relevant in modern times. Case in point: the contemporary alchemy of sculptor Dan Ostermiller, who transforms bronze into wondrous representations of nature’s most amazing creatures. Perhaps there is a bit of magic involved, but his art is a shining example of the results of long years of observation and fine-tuning his craftsmanship.

Ostermiller’s dedication to observa-tion, especially, earns him high praise. “As a person, Dan is wonderfully thought-ful and observant. He has great humor and a bright intellect that continues to push him to discover and learn,” says Ann Brown of Nedra Matteucci Galleries in Santa Fe. “I believe his calm, quiet na-ture allows him to access his subjects at a level beyond a purely aesthetic render-ing of the animal world. He has spent countless hours developing an under-

standing and expertise that offers us rare insight and sensitivity, ably conveyed in his art, challenging us both artistically and emotionally.”

Ostermiller was exposed to the artistic handling of the animal form almost from his birth in Cheyenne, WY. His father, Roy Ostermiller, was a world-renowned taxidermist and an avid sportsman who often spent months hunting in remote locations. He wielded considerable influ-ence on his son and taught Dan about ani-mals literally from the inside out. From the time the boy was old enough to sweep the floor, Roy had him in the shop, draw-ing his attention to all the minute details that comprise a well-preserved, well- displayed trophy animal. His father took Dan everywhere with him; Dan shot his first antelope by the time he was seven and was hunting elephant in Africa in his twenties. The Ostermiller table frequently featured fish and game. But sometimes, the artist says, “I longed for a regular steak!”

Although he’s had no formal art educa-tion other than the critical, well-honed technical skills he learned from his father, Ostermiller has been interested in art for as long as he can remember. The work of other men who built an art career upon a foundation of taxidermy also played a Cazador, bronze, 58 x 12 x 12.

all photos by MaRCia WaRd


Oblivious, bronze, 123 x 48 x 100.


role in shaping his future. Such names as Carl Akley, James L. Clark, and Louis Paul Jonas roll off Ostermiller’s tongue with admiration, as does that of illustri-ous Italian animal sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti. He also credits such contempo-raries as Herb Mignery, Jane DeDecker, George Lundeen, Glenna Goodacre, and Fritz White with helping to advance his work.

the deeper Ostermiller becomes in-volved in his art, the more important it is to him to be in the animals’ habitats, to see and understand how they move and behave. He studies details such as the hesitant pause before placing a paw or a hoof on the ground, the cocked head

Nightlife, bronze, 19 x 10 x 29.

or swiveled ear, the massive bunched muscles of a lion’s haunches as he read-ies himself to attack, even the motions of domestic animals at leisure. Speak-ing of his time in the field, he says, “I like being in the ‘circle of life’ out there. Keen observation is so important, to see how the light affects the animals in mid-day, or at night. There’s something in-credible about being in ‘their’ world. It gets pretty humbling—more so the more you experience.”

In addition to his in-depth knowl-edge of American wildlife, the artist has been visiting Africa almost every other year since that first trip with his father in 1978. Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, and many

other countries have been the sites of some amazing adventures. On one trip with his daughter, Lauren, they were watching a herd of elephants at a water-ing hole. Two young bulls were mock fighting with one another and became so engaged in the tussle that they didn’t notice the herd moving on, leaving them behind. “The terror they felt when they realized they were alone was obvious,” says Ostermiller. “That event stuck in my mind for a long time. Sometimes an idea embeds itself like that and then, often much later, becomes a concrete concept for a piece I have to do.” He recently com-pleted a 42-inch-long piece comprising 17 elephants, based on that incident.

Size, complexity, and detail never


Open Swim, bronze, 13 x 15 x 18.

with individual personality. Construct-ing a bronze sculpture of this size is a time-consuming and literally monumen-tal task. It proceeded from sketches to small-scale models (called maquettes) of each figure, which were then separated into pieces. Each piece was recreated on a larger scale and used for casting the hefty bronze panels that would eventually be fitted together in the finished work.

Ostermiller’s cow-and-calf pair are just one of his well-loved public art installa-tions. The Stark Museum in Orange, TX, recently installed OBLIVIOUS [see page 6]

at the building’s entrance. Managing Di-rector Sarah Boehme found herself espe-cially attracted to this piece, she says, “be-cause of the artistry of the composition. The sculpture portrays a bear sleeping at the top of a tree trunk. The trunk is an-gled diagonally, and the large mass of the bear exists dramatically cantilevered into space, yet it is masterfully balanced.” The bear’s rounded mass on its sharply angled base contrasts elegantly against the white cube of the museum building and is a fa-vorite with visitors and passersby alike.

Ostermiller’s sculptures differ from the usual depictions of animals, as can be seen in such pieces as GRACE, Oster-miller’s metaphorical depiction of a gi-raffe, and in the muscular, craggy bulk of MONARCH OF YELLOWSTONE [see page 9]. There is an energetic immediacy and gestural quality to each piece that

draws viewers closer. As Ann Brown suggests, “It is

nearly impossible to visually absorb one of Dan’s creations without considering

the character, the en-ergy, and the movement he’s captured. Dan’s technical abilities are so acute and finely tuned, reflecting his confi-dence in translating the animal form. He is able to expand beyond the art form to the imaginative—every animal implies a narrative, whether reflecting the wilds of Africa, the human experi-ence relating to our domestic animal

friends, or simply nature expressing its creative magnificence.”

oStermiller carries out nearly every step of his process in a two-acre compound in the heart of

Loveland, CO, where numerous buildings dot the grounds. At the entrance is the office and confer-ence room, where the number-one

sculpture in each of his sold-out editions is displayed. Paintings, draw-

ings, and illustrations from his extensive personal art collection line the walls, along with an exhibition of his and his father’s rif les. This is the kingdom of Niles the cat.

A second building holds the artist’s main work space and his library of some 4,000 volumes on art, animals, and trav-el. Ostermiller designed the surrounding

slow Ostermiller down when it comes to choosing subject matter. The artist tack-les everything from larger-than-life-size public art to the exquisite 2-inch min-iatures he creates each year during the holiday season. His largest piece to date, SCOTTISH ANGUS COW AND CALF, is in-stalled outside the Denver Art Museum and consists of two gigantic elements. The cow is 13 feet tall and the calf, 10 feet. In 2009, it was voted Denver’s best public sculpture. As with all of the sculp-tor’s works, these figures are noteworthy for their remarkable realism combined


landscape and created all of the water features; there are about 25 sculptures placed throughout the gardens. Two Bearded Collies, Inja and Jordie, roam the grounds, keeping an eye on things. During warmer months, pots of herbs, tomato plants, and annuals appear as well as a rose garden, bulbs for springtime color, and many flowering shrubs. The sur-rounding walls are covered with ivy, providing privacy and, the artist says, “a feeling of paradise.”

Rounding out the property’s structures is the “yellow studio,” so named for its yellow walls, which houses the artist’s collection of pre-Co-lumbian and Native American pottery and where he does his conceptual work. It is here that Ostermiller pursues an-other passion: cooking. If he hadn’t be-come an artist, he says, “I’d have been a chef.” He’s not kidding—he’s a serious practitioner of the culinary arts and has studied in four different Italian cook-ing schools, most notably with Marcella Hazan in Venice and Giuliano Bugialli in Florence. Many a pleasurable hour has been spent at his Viking stove in the yellow studio, cooking for guests. Paradise indeed!

Professional and public recognition of Ostermiller’s art has expanded ex-ponentially since his first show in 1980. His sculpture has won numerous awards and honors and has been included in ex-hibitions and one-person shows around the country. A member of the National Sculpture Society for many years and its president from 2003 to 2005, he soon be-gins a second term in office.

To view Ostermiller’s fine work is to reconnect with nature, to tighten our un-derstanding of our relationship with all living creatures. Owning an Ostermiller sculpture punctuates our lives with a dai-ly reminder of that connection. As Ann Brown sums it up, “Dan Ostermiller is one of those lucky individuals who have a passion that they realize, celebrate, and nurture with dedication throughout their lives. In doing so, he has been vital to the recognition of contemporary animal sculpture in American art.” F

Rosemary Carstens writes for several national maga-zines and publishes the award-winning webzine FEAST.

this content has been abridged from an original article written by Rosemary Carstens. © f+W Media, inc. all rights reserved. f+W Media grants permission for any or all pages in this premium to be copied for personal use.

Barnyard Gossips, bronze, 27 x 8 x 27.

Monarch of Yellowstone, bronze, 12 x 7 x 17. 3


The Soul of Wildlifebart Walter simplifies the surface of animal sculpture to reveal a creature’s essential spirit

b y g u s s i e f a u n t l e R o y

An enormouS black bear lowers his head and leans on one massive paw as he feeds on tender, early summer sweetgrass in Yellowstone National Park. Forty yards away in the protection of a Chevy van, Bart Walter’s hands and eyes are swiftly working—bending aluminum wire to the shape of the bruin’s massive curved haunches and extended front leg. The artist’s eyes continually move between the animal in the meadow and the like-ness taking form around a supporting rod on a plywood stand.

When the wire sufficiently expresses the stance and sheer physicality of the bear—on a small scale—Walter fills in the form with crumpled pieces of the

national park’s regulations brochure, having this

once forgotten to bring along the usual alu-

minum foil onto which he later

Yellowstone Bear Study, bronze, 11 x 7 x 10.

applies a surface of wax.With his gaze alternately absorb-

ing the bear’s slow movements and the swift, careful work of his own hands, the sculptor reaches for flakes of wax that have been warming on the dash-board in the sun. He presses and spreads the softened material in broad, quick strokes, leaving the surface marked by his thumbs and by irregular spaces be-tween small slabs of wax.

He adds the suggestion of eyes and thick muzzle; he smoothes the curve of hindquarters, adjusts the bend of a leg. With each motion and subtle change, the likeness is refined. Anything that does not convey powerful male bear quietly feeding on grass is pulled or pressed into a truer shape, finally reflecting the essence of the magnificent wild creature doing what a bear in its natural habitat does.

Walter, whose award-winning, inter-nationally collected art has been featured in a number of solo museum exhibitions, is among very few wildlife sculptors who work—from start to finish, in the case of a small piece—from life. Rather than rely on photographs, memory, or sketches (although he does occasionally refer to these), the Maryland-based artist spends long stretches of time in the presence of the animals he is drawn to, sculpting them en plein air. The results, charged with the excitement and energy of direct ex-perience and spontaneous response, are a far cry from the “excruciatingly detailed” style of wood carving for which he once was renowned.

the mAgnetiCAlly powerful at-traction that pulls Walter outdoors into the wilds of western mountains, Afri-can savannahs, and even the hardwood


forests of his own gently rolling twenty acres near Westminster, MD, had its ori-gins not far from his present home. Grow-ing up in Baltimore, young Bart spent summers at the family’s cottage near the Chesapeake Bay on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. With his black Lab retriever trot-ting and sniffing nearby, he spent hours wandering in the marshes and piney woods. It was an area rich in wildlife, especially birds. “I spent a great deal of time on my own,” he relates. “I’d climb in a canoe or put on hip waders and just explore.”

Now 53, Walter still enjoys traveling off the beaten track. Indeed, he is a fel-low in good standing at the international Explorers’ Club. “That aspect of life is a large part of who I am,” he reflects, “not in the sense of [the explorer David] Liv-

ingstone, going where no white man has set foot before. Just a personal exploration of things that are new to me.” That spirit has taken him to geographically distant, untrammeled places. It also has led to creative realms that have challenged his concepts of what he believed he could do.

Through it all has been not only a fas-cination with wildlife, beginning with Maryland’s deer and birds, but also with art. As a boy Walter made frequent vis-its to Baltimore’s art museums, stand-ing at length before such sculptures as Rodin’s THE THINKER and works by 19th-century French sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. “Those impressed me deeply. Rodin’s sculpture was very powerful—the forms, the weight of it—and I was drawn to the action and fidelity to na-ture that Barye captured in bronze,” he

recalls. Among painters, the French Im-pressionists, with their evocative sug-gestion of place, claimed a strong hold on his creative imagination.

At age eight Walter took up a penknife and began carving birds in wood. By the time he was 14 he was creating ducks from old two-by-four boards, still using a penknife, although he soon stepped up to basswood and better tools. As a stu-dent at Hiram College in Ohio he earned spending money with his bird carvings, and after graduating with a biology degree—his father insisted he study something more “serious” than art—he turned his passion into a profession. By the mid-1980s Walter had become known as one of the world’s top wildlife carvers, producing works in which every delicate feather was exquisitely carved.

Bull Moose Maquette, bronze, 20 x 8 x 15.


far more life, far more motion and gesture than the finished works in wood. I think my roots were calling to me—the sculp-tures I saw in museums as a boy. When I started switching to clay I realized I did not want it to be about surface texture; I wanted it to be about the essence of the animal.” Training himself in this new way of working, the sculptor read count-less books, including several biographies of Rodin, studied the work of Rembrandt Bugatti—whose sculpture was enormous-ly influential in Walter’s development—and spent days on end in art museums. Then, in 1986, Jane Goodall stepped into his life and presented him with a chal-lenge that cemented his newfound artis-tic path.

Walter’s wife, Lynn, was earning a master’s degree in biology at the Col-lege of William & Mary in Virginia when Goodall gave a lecture at the school. Lynn happened to be wearing one of her hus-band’s delicately carved feather pins, which Goodall noticed. The famed chim-panzee researcher asked Walter to sculpt a chimp for her. The seemingly simple re-quest took two years to complete, includ-ing exhaustive research, countless visits

Otter Knot, bronze, 16 x 14 x 20.Sentinel, bronze, 9 x 6 x 19.

Yet this minutely detailed level of real-ism eventually came to feel like an obstacle to the emergence of an even greater cre-ative movement. “Carving in wood was frustrating because I only got one shot at the form,” the artist observes. “I was feel-ing tentative and not happy with that, es-

pecially with those last few millimeters of wood. It didn’t seem to be driving at the core of what I felt sculpture was about.”

Having used clay to shape preparatory models for the birds he carved in wood, he found himself contemplating a shift in medium. “I realized the clay models had

www.SouthweStArt.com 13this content has been abridged from an original article written by gussie fauntleroy. © f+W. all rights reserved. f+W grants permission for any or all pages in this premium to be copied for personal use.

to zoos to do sketches and clay studies, and much agonizing about producing a suitable chimpanzee sculpture for the world’s foremost chimp expert. Finally Walter created two small chimps—among his first-ever works in bronze. Goodall was pleased with them and pur-chased both.

Since then the artist has further de-veloped the distinctive loose surface style that characterizes his current sculpture, which ranges in size from tabletop to monumental. Among his largest works is a depiction of five elk in front of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY. The grouping, on a faux-rock outcropping, measures 50 feet long and includes a 10-foot-high bull elk.

For a decade or so Walter focused on African animals, spending months at a time in the field in Kenya, observing and sculpting everything from cheetahs to lions to giraffes. In more recent years he has turned most frequently to the fauna of North America, while occasionally

making the human figure the subject of his art. Depictions of Maasai warriors reflect his deep respect for what he de-scribes as the Maasai’s “completely stag-gering knowledge of the natural world.”

Walter’s own biology training comes into play as he visualizes an animal’s mus-cular and skeletal structure, as well as understanding its behaviors and habitat. Yet every new creature presents its own set of challenges. For example, sketching or sculpting a walking elephant requires a strategy, since even at a moderate pace an elephant covers a lot of ground, the artist points out.

“I watch, study, start an armature, and then make a big loop to get in front and let the elephant come toward us. I might do that 25 or 30 times before I’ve got what I need. I could just take a photo and be done with it,” he adds, smiling. “This way of working may just be an excuse to spend more time in the field.”

Occasionally a wildlife encounter provides more excitement than plan-ned. While sculpting COW MOOSE—

appropriately, near Moose, WY— Walter was charged by a mother moose as he tried to calm an agitated yearling by making a sound he’d heard other moose make. Fortunately, when the mamma saw he was not a moose, she relaxed and the sculptor was able, after his heart stopped pounding, to complete the piece.

Walter’s passion for expressing spot-on accuracy of gesture, movement, and balance in an animal extends as well to hands-on involvement in the bronze cast-ing stage, where he closely oversees the finishing of each piece.

“My goal is a distillation of the sub-ject until only true essentials are left,” he notes. “If I can reveal some intan-gible spirit, make evident the soul of my subject, and communicate this in my art, then I have accomplished some-thing real.” F

Colorado-based Gussie Fauntleroy also writes for Native Peoples, Phoenix Home & Garden, and other magazines and is the author of three books on vi-sual artists.

Wapiti Trail, bronze, life-size.


Animal MagnetismWildlife sculptor tim Cherry focuses on form to express the very essence of his subjects

b y n o R M a n k o l p a s

ASK moSt ArtiStS to describe the latent glimmerings of their careers, and you’ll likely hear some variation on a sto-ry of growing up with crayon or pencil in hand. That, however, is not the case for sculptor Tim Cherry.

His earliest memory of art? In the seventh grade in Nelson, a town in the Canadian Rockies in southeastern British Columbia, he was sent to the principal’s Squirrel Stretch, bronze, 33 x 19 x 7.

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office. “I was not partaking in the art class,” Cherry recalls, his chuckle tinged with chagrin. “I explained that it was a waste of my time because art was never going to be a part of my life.”

Instead, Cherry’s hands were most of-ten occupied with rod and reel. “I learned fishing from my grandfather and spent every second that I possibly could out on the creek,” he says. “I think I knew every trout by name.”

When the weather turned too cold to fish, he found other ways to spend time outdoors. “I’d be out on snowshoes, set-ting up trap lines to catch squirrels and martins. Everything revolved around ani-mals,” he says. “I always knew that some-how, some way, animals were going to be a part of my life.”

At 16, he landed a summer job as a cook and wrangler for an outfit that ran wilderness excursions. Fresh out of high school in 1986, he became a full-fledged guide, a career he enjoyed for 12 years.

“We would round up and shoe our horses at the end of June, then trek in and set up a base camp in northern British Columbia, the Yukon, or the Northwest Territories,” he explains. Such outposts could be extremely remote, as much as 150 miles from the nearest road and sev-eral hundred air miles from the closest village. “In the Yukon, we had 10,000 square miles virtually to ourselves,” Cherry recalls. “It was very pristine, like going back in time.”

One of his greatest pleasures in the wil-derness was the sheer abundance of ani-

mals, he notes, as he rattles off a litany of common sightings: “In a single day, you might see moose, caribou, grizzly bears, red fox, golden eagles, ground squirrels, a few rabbits, a lot of ptarmigan, river ot-ters, beavers, hoary marmots, some Dall sheep, wolves, wolverine. And the fishing was fabulous beyond description because so much of that water had never even had a hook in it.”

By 19, Cherry had also developed an interest in taxidermy and applied to work for a month in the Maine studio of professional taxidermist Forest Hart, an expert in sculpting the finely detailed mannequins upon which the animals are mounted. While learning the pro-cess from literally the inside out as he sculpted mannequins himself, Cherry

First Look, alabaster and Brazilian substone, 9 x 8 x 3. Mountain Den, bronze and stainless steel, 19 x 11.


up work. “Everything is available there to learn about every facet of being a sculp-tor, and a lot of the studios needed help on different projects,” he says. He paid the rent by working for a mold-maker and finishing metal in a foundry, all the while gaining knowledge from base- makers and photographers, foundry men and patineurs.

In addition to spending time at Oster-miller’s studio, Cherry rented his own studio space from sculptor Fritz White, who became another mentor. “Fritz helped me enormously on the principles of design,” Cherry explains. “He taught me that sculpture is oriented on mass, and it’s a matter of design to come up with a form that is very contained.”

thuS did Cherry’s distinctive style begin to emerge, focusing on animals while streamlining the forms to express

Bodacious Bunny, bronze, 10 x 15 x 6.

discovered he had a natural talent for capturing his subjects’ form, muscula-ture, and movement.

In a serendipitous event that seemed somehow destined, Hart had just begun to create fine-art bronze sculptures, and he invited Cherry to the foundry for the casting of his very first piece. The pro-cess, and the magnificent way in which it captured nature, was a revelation. “This is it,” Cherry recalls thinking to himself. “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

He returned to Canada eager to em-bark on his new calling, but uncertain how to proceed. “It was frustrating,” he admits. Fortunately, serendipity—or perhaps fate—once again played its part. It was 1988 and Cherry was at a remote base camp in the Yukon, awaiting a cli-ent to lead on an outdoor adventure trip. But bad weather kept the client from fly-

ing in. Another client managed to get there, only to find that his guide had been “weathered out.” So for the next several days Cherry found himself paired up with the unexpected client, who just hap-pened to be renowned wildlife sculptor Dan Ostermiller. “I guess you could say that weather threw us together. It was just one of those great Ma Nature things,” says Cherry.

“Danny and I hit it off. He’s a great guy, very kind, and we had a good time,” he continues. Learning of Cherry’s interest in wildlife sculpture, Ostermiller told him about the growing sculpture scene in his home of Loveland, CO. “He invited me down there to see what was going on.”

Cherry soon took Ostermiller up on the invitation. He packed up his truck and headed south for what would be the first of four winters spent in Loveland. He quickly found a place to live and picked

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the very essence of the subject. “I like to think what I do is the middle ground be-tween realism and abstraction, where I can straddle both worlds with a stylized design that still captures the character-istics of the animal,” he notes. He gener-ously cites a wealth of influences on this approach: “Fritz and Danny, of course,” as well as the river stone sculptures of Steve Kestrel, monumental pieces by Kent Ullberg and Allan Houser, and the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements with their “big sweeping lines and volumes.”

“That’s where individual style comes from: A work of art speaks to you in some way, and you take what’s important and it becomes part of you and what you do,” says Cherry with characteristic humility.

Cherry’s particular style quickly gained recognition. While exhibiting his work at a show in Charleston, SC, in 1989, he met the director of a gallery in Branson, MO, who took on some of his sculptures. “It started as a professional relationship,” he says, “and took a year or two to become a personal one.” Cherry moved to Branson to be with Linda in 1992, and they mar-ried four years later.

Working in the small studio along-side the home he shares with Linda and their daughter, Amber, in a quiet resi-dential neighborhood of Branson, he usu-ally starts a piece with a quick thumbnail pencil sketch that aims to capture an animal gesture he’s observed, or perhaps an abstract form that has intrigued him. “Then I jump to working in clay,” he says, noting that he always sculpts at full scale, with his works ranging in size from a few inches up to 8 feet tall. “There comes a point at which the sculpture takes over, and I just follow along.”

When the time comes to cast his limited-edition pieces, Cherry returns to Loveland, where he works with his longtime found-ry, Bronze Services, and then with expert patineur Patrick Kipper. Lately, Cherry has also been casting pieces in stainless steel, working with an outfit called Deep in the Heart Art Foundry in Bastrop, TX. “There’s so much still to explore,” says Cherry, pointing out that he’s begun ex-perimenting with pieces that combine both bronze and stainless steel. A few months ago he also started hand carving small, one-of-a-kind sculptures in stone.

Yet, for all his accomplishments as an artist, Cherry, age 44, remains essentially

the same person who always knew that his life would revolve around animals. Just as he can vividly recall the animals he witnessed years ago in the Canadian wilderness, he now recites with equal vividness a roll call of Ozark wildlife he’s likely to see whenever he steps out-side his door: “Bald eagles, ospreys, great blue herons, green herons, mallards and wood ducks and cormorants. I just had a turkey run through the yard. Red fox, bobcat, armadillos, possums, rabbits. A group of white-tailed deer. Kingfishers.

All the songbirds. Cardinals. Pileated woodpeckers. Redheaded woodpeckers.”

With eyes trained since boyhood to revel in Ma Nature’s wonders, he stands poised to turn any such sighting into a work of art. “There are a million miracles around you every day,” he observes. “It’s just a matter of being aware of them.” F

Norman Kolpas is a Los Angeles-based freelancer who writes for Mountain Living and Colorado Homes & Lifestyles as well as Southwest Art.

Cat-tentment, bronze, 8 x 31 x 14.


Telling MomentsStar liana york infuses her sculpture with personality and life

b y g u s s i e f a u n t l e R o y

Bluebird Vessel, bronze, 7 x 4 x 4.


the FirSt time sculptor Star Liana York shaped clay into a human figure large enough to have a clear facial expression, she was surprised by what she saw in that face. It led to a realization that radically changed her approach to art.

York was in her late 20s, and up until then much of her sculpture had been min-iature animals cast in silver or gold. She had recently begun to work larger and have the pieces cast in bronze. The Smith-sonian Institution had commissioned her to create a bronze figure as part of a di-orama on Native peoples of the American Southwest.

The museum asked York to sculpt a Na-vajo medicine man making a sand paint-ing. Squatting beside the painting, the man’s attention was focused on the thin line of sand flowing through his fingers. “As I was concentrating on doing his face,” York recalls, “there was a point at which I realized he was looking at me with the same look of concentration I had while

sculpting him. It was the first time I real-ized that I could see a personality in some-thing I’d made. That figure had something of myself in it, but it also had a distinct personality of its own.”

The revelation was momentous for York, whose widely collected bronze animal and human figures are admired as much for their lively sense of char-acter as for their accuracy and graceful lines. While infusing a sculpture with personality was a pivotal experience for York, working with her hands was noth-ing new. Nor was her lifelong affinity for animals—a passion that led her into sculpting in the first place.

even At a very early age, according to her mother’s stories, young Star could be found hovering close by whenever there was a new litter of puppies or kittens near the family’s rural Maryland home. A few years later in her father’s workshop, she drew animal shapes on wood, cut them

out with a jigsaw, filed down the edges, and painted them. In high school, York and her sister pooled $250 from babysit-ting and odd jobs to buy a horse, saddle, and bridle. The two girls happily shared the horse, which was followed by many others in the artist’s life.

York, now 57, sees in herself a blend of natural abilities and traits from both sides of the familial gene pool. Her mother was a professional ballet dancer and stage and costume designer before she married and started a family. Her father was an engi-neer with a woodworker’s hands. “My mother had lots of creativity, and my fa-ther was very rooted in practicality,” York relates, “I think I got a little of both.”

This is evident in the creative yet prac-tical design of her studio, which is just a short walk from the northern New Mex-ico home she shares with her husband, stone sculptor Jeff Brock. On a warm sum-mer day the studio doors are open wide to the world. A concrete porch, which

New Moon Rabbit, bronze, 20 x 17 x 11. Feast Day, bronze, 15 x 7 x 3.


them became real people. I could imagine them as someone, like my grandmother or a friend. My uncle looked for and cap-tured those telling moments and gestures that revealed people’s personality and character. That’s what I hope to achieve with my sculpture.

“I love the anonymous quote that goes:

doubles as a loading dock for sculptures, rises several feet above a lush green field that extends to a line of cottonwoods along the Rio Chama. The couple’s horses often amble up to the porch for a visit. Seen grazing or running in the field, the breeze in their manes, the animals’ fiery and playful equine spirit provides inspi-ration for the sculptor’s art.

Horses have been among York’s pri-mary subjects for many years. In addition to her lifelong love of the animals—she rides every day—she finds they offer the sculptural interest of physical solidity combined with fluid lines. Yet beyond the visual, horses share many thousands of years of history with humankind. In ancient times, York notes, before they knew human weight on their backs, hors-es meant food and clothing for nomadic people—thus, the creature’s central place in the earliest examples of art, found painted on cave walls by Paleolithic man.

“Seeing pregnant mares meant abun-dance and survival for those people,” York points out. “And that was only the begin-ning. When horses were domesticated, they not only provided food and milk and were an important part of nomadic life, but they also allowed men to roam far-ther and faster and become more power-ful. Even today, I think people raised in the city can still connect with that shared history. It’s in our DNA,” she continues. “The history of the horse resounds in our very genes.”

York’s sculpted horses include smooth, “roly-poly” mares with the stylized color-ation and look of rock art—such as SASSY and COQUETTE—as well as horses with a more straightforward, representational feel. As in all her art, her goal is to imbue each piece, regardless of style, with char-acter as distinctive as the individual ani-mal. This goal can be traced back to the realization York experienced while carv-ing the medicine man for the Smithson-ian. It also has roots in another, earlier memory that had an important effect on her work.

As a child, York pored over photos in National Geographic, studying the images of exotic wildlife and tribal people in Af-rica. She remembers having the impres-sion that the Africans in the magazine were almost another species, so posed and expressionless were they, and so un-like anyone she personally knew.

Then her uncle, a schoolteacher and “closet anthropologist,” took a sabbati-cal and traveled to Africa, living for a time with a bushman and his family in Botswana. He brought back photos of people he’d met. These photos elicited a very different response in young Star.

“When I saw his pictures, the people in

Sassy & Coquette, bronze, 14 x 15 x 15 each.

Purrfect Lazy Days, bronze, 11 x 36.

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‘A man who works with his hands is a laborer. A man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman. And a man who works with his hands, his brain, and his heart is an artist.’ So, as artists, if we’re going to do something worthy of a permanent medium, we need to give it heart.”

In sculpting the human figure, York often discovers—after finishing a piece—that the character she has cre-ated reminds her of someone close to her. BRANDING FIRE, for example, portrays a cowboy standing over a small fire. He is out on the range and has found a maver-ick that needs branding. The cowboy’s expression is one of satisfaction. “It’s an expression I saw in my father’s face,” York explains. “It goes back to values we have as Americans—appreciation of an honest day’s work and the satisfaction of a job well done.”

Expressing personality in wildlife is a greater challenge, York notes. She ac-complishes it by emphasizing gesture and posing the animal in a character-istic activity or stance. Two life-sized ravens on a worktable in her studio, for instance, stand with beaks open in ani-mated conversation. “There are so many ravens around here, and they’re such characters,” she laughs. “They’ll follow us around when we’re riding, and they tease the dogs.”

York’s versatility is evident in the many series of works she produces. Her website lists seven different categories: equine, western, Native peoples, ances-tral (rock-art inspired pieces), wildlife, and “spiritual liaisons.” The latter in-cludes ritualistic vessels and fetish-style animals incorporating stone sculpture by her husband. These pieces speak to the earth-based, often shamanistic forms of

spirituality common among traditional Native cultures of the Southwest.

Ravens, wild mustangs, bobcats, mountain lions, and wolves are part of York’s Wildlife of the Southern Rockies series. These works pay tribute to ani-mals indigenous to the part of the world the sculptor has called home for nearly 25 years. She moved to New Mexico in 1985 to be near the Weston Studio-Foundry in Santa Fe.

“I wound up here for the foundry, but I discovered inspiration on so many levels— the landscape, the cultures, the creatures. It touched off an explosion of creativity in me,” the artist reflects. After a moment of quiet she adds, “It’s so important to find that passion in your life.” F

Santa Fe-based Gussie Fauntleroy also writes for Art & Antiques, New Mexico Magazine, Native Peo-ples, and the Santa Fean.

Cat-tentment, bronze, 8 x 31 x 14.

Regal Repose, bronze, 39 x 75.

collecting resource guide collecting contemporary sculpture · of fort collins. the house sits near...

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