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Arlene Fins/Saturday Morning

The shelves in Arlene Fins' studio are populated with a faceless crowd. Posed seated or standing tall and proud, each temporary figure waits for its chosen day when Fins will rework its chocolate brown clay body into a finished sculpture. Arlene frequently works on several figures at a time, alternating as the mood strikes, enjoying both the feel of the evolving sculpture under her fingertips and the unexpected turn her life as an artist has taken.

A resident of Acton, Massachusetts, Arlene has worked for most of her career as an illustrator and graphic artist. She had been playing with the idea of writing and illustrating her own children's book when a family trip to the beach a few years ago changed everything.

"I was out at the beach with my family and I just started sculpting figures in the sand," Fins said. "I got lost. I didn't notice a crowd had gathered to watch me build a whole person, lying there in the sand. And I knew I had found what I was meant to do. I love every step of the process of developing a three dimensional sculpture. Before, in a drawing, I would spend hours and hours just trying to get a detail right and it was excruciating. Sculpting just came so naturally to me. Instead of showing the contour of an arm by using shading and light, all I have to do now is go around and work it."

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Brian & Michele Hooey/Tree of Life Brian and Michele were married just four months after they met in 1993. As newlyweds, they shared a desire to spend their days together creating beautiful artwork. Holding to their vision, they jumped out of the "real world" and dove full-time into their dream. The first challenge? How do you create something absolutely unique? That was when the vision of their wood and copper sculptures was born. Brian explains, "I liked metal sculptures, but they were very common and in quite a few instances, too 'cold' for many decors. Instead, I thought I could take the best qualities of wood and copper and combine them into something no one else had. By using steam to bend the wood, we overcame some of the limitations that wood presented. By marrying wood and copper, we created an item that was flexible, strong, and much warmer in both color and texture".		 sculpture sculpture
Brian and Michelle's dream has resulted in a wonderful variety of decorative flowers, vines and trees, magnificent sculpture featuring steam-bent wooden leaves on a brazed framework of copper. Each leaf is individually crafted and stained with rich color.
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Vladimir Barsukov/"Minuet", Copper & Brass Mobile

Vladimir was born in Tbilisi, the capital city of the southern Soviet Republic of Georgia. He has had a life-long fascination for things that rely on principles of basic mechanics and simple geometry to achieve goals of balance and beauty: this includes toys, tools and works of pure art. He discovered a penchant for science and art in school, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics and physics. After immigrating to the U.S. he began creating artistic mobiles from paper, foil, wood, stones, rubber, glass, and metals for suspension indoors and out.
Vladimir says: "Creating mobiles is a wonderful combination of science and art. My goal is to create individual pieces that are like living creatures, each with its own temper and mood, continually moving in slow motion and changing in space, light and color. To accomplish this, I choose materials that maximize the potential for freedom of movement, and I find the center of gravity of the geometrical design using visual perception and the tactile sensation of the media. For me, watching the graceful movements of the finished pieces is meditative and gives a feeling of serenity. I hope observing these gentle dancers will provide others with their own sense of peace."
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Charles Gibbs/Copper Bird
Imagine you have encountered a strange creature that begs closer investigation. You discover it is fashioned from metal parts, wires and tubes and objects that look like junk. The creature is even more mysterious now, an intricate web of metal which comes together in a way you have never seen before. The longer you stare and dissect the creature with your eyes, the more satisfied its creator, Charles Gibbs, is likely to be.

"From a very early age I was interested in metalworking, like since I was five years old," recalls the self-taught metal sculptor. It just held up a great fascination with me. I remember as a young child seeing a Native American silversmith at a museum in San Francisco and I was just entranced by what this guy was doing."
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His obsessions made Gibbs different from all the other kids. "I think my earliest aspiration of life was to be a blacksmith, rather than a baseball player or something like that! I was a little unusual in that respect! Even as a very young child, my father had a workshop and lots of tools in it and I started off hammering little weapons and thing out of nails and bits of wire - you know, just pounding away with hammer on anvil, shaping things. Just loved the whole process."
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