Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Dean.
Hi Jacob, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
As a child artist-tinkerer, I remember clearly that glue, tape, nails, and folds were a constant barrier to “putting things together”. Things rarely held together as well as I imagined they could; so the first time I welded two pieces of steel together in 8th grade metal shop class, it was like my life came together too. Perfect, immediate, permanent adhesion was now possible. Wow! Dad bought a small welder and some basic metal working tools for me. He also bought about 8000 feet of pipe, cut in 10 ft pieces, out of which I made him fence panels for our home property.
It was a couple of years later, after having learned how to weld by trial and error, that I was hired by Rick Prazen. Rick was a professional metal sculptor. He saw I had a “knack and a love” for the craft. We spent the next decade creating progressively greater metal sculptures together. When it came time for me to move away, and start my studio, he made me promise to never fabricate gates and railing, but only focus on art. I obliged. It took years of chasing every lead, and begging for patrons, to build up a portfolio and reputation.
Some +/- fifty thousand hours later, we most often enjoy a consistent lineup of commissioned work. It has largely been a tumultuous ride, but I’m very grateful for the novelty and variety of it: even if that variety might be spending thousands of hours meticulously grinding individual feather patterns into chicken sculptures.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road has been a-typical. Metal sculpture offers original work, all the time. People often like this. Any sculpture I do is an original piece. The problem? There is a difference between “an” original piece of art, and “thee” original piece of art.
It took me a long time to reconcile that distinction; that the element that brings great monetary value to an original piece is most often the familiarity achieved by flooding the world with reproductions of it. I have no incentive to do reproductions! It would be a sad thing, to start as an artist, and instead, become a production facility. The hard part has been creating new work, all the time. The wonderful part has been creating new work, all the time.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In the world of metal sculpture, there is an awesome amount of room to explore. Being a relatively new medium, and being harder to access for beginners because of cost and facility access, there is still lots of room for invention. Not Saturated! I have loved learning the intricate details of human anatomy, and the neoclassical ideal. One of the last living neoclassical masters, Stan Johnson, took me into his confidence when he was in his late 80s. We labored over ecorche models and studied the Masters of old.
It has been my greatest privilege to weld, pound, and grind up life-size figures in the likeness of the people represented. It is sometimes assumed that my work must be a casting,sinces observers are unable to believe that the figures were formed directly from the steel. I cannot know how many other metal sculptors are capable of doing what I do. Few are trying to create realistic figurative art. Luckily, I am not bound to that niche. Animals, relief sculptures, landscapes, fountains, and impressionistic work are all part of the workflow over the years.
Of all the work, I am quite grateful to be currently working on a memorial and awareness piece for PTSD and veteran suicide. In this sculpture, a war veteran is holding out his heart and his brain in his hands, in a desperate bid for us to see what the war cost him. That figure will be in the path of a massive wave made of 80,000 spent bullet shells: a shell for each soldier who lost the war at home.
This piece will be placed at a coming facility in Cedar City UT. The Southern Utah Veterans Association is building a center where veterans and first responders can come and do a variety of artworks, without charge, so they can have a creative experience as they heal from wartime trauma.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.metalsculptureartist.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobdeansculptor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063574687509
