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“While it has not been my principal vocation, sculpting has been not only my principal avocation; it has increasingly occupied my mind (often in the middle of the night) in recent years. While with my eyes I can’t see the shapes I create, I feel them over and over again with my hands and my mind, and the result is in my mind forever. Like most sculptors, I use a variety of models for reference and get lots of opinions, but only I can be blamed for the final result. It takes me more time and patience than most with sight and letting go is generally felt with more uncertainty. So, it is satisfying to finish something that I have doubted along the way, woken up thinking about in the middle of the night, spent a lot of time on and given a lot of love. It is especially satisfying and enjoyable when others I care about truly like the result when it is finally done.”
This piece was inspired by the wisdom, patience, and hunting efficiency of a pair of great horned owls that visited the artist’s farm one summer. The artist’s wife named the sculpture George after the artist’s father who had substantial eyebrows.
The Flukes sculpture was born from an experience in Nantucket. A whole school of pilot whales became stranded on a sandbar at low tide. With others, the artist helped move them off the sandbar as the tide came in. While stranded, the whales were plaintively talking to each other. The artist became interested in the way the whales sounded and interested in their shape, power and grace. The sculpture was created as an abstraction of the imagined joy they would express in being freed.
In Moment, an Atlantic salmon is in a leaping somersaulting twist — the double helix of life and the will to survive. Every four to six years the salmon fulfills one of nature’s most extraordinary odysseys of life. Then, if it survives, does it all over again. A moment in the life of one of nature’s most amazing symbols of graceful beauty, power and determination.
Focus II is a peregrine falcon, the fastest living creature. A falcon can dive at up to 240 miles per hour while hunting prey. The sculpture is a depiction of a peregrine falcon about to dive down and to the left to catch its prey.
The sculpture Little Crankyis a small version of a great blue heron. Native Americans referred to the great blue heron as “big cranky” because of its call and size. The piece depicts the heron as it begins its takeoff from shallow water after fishing in a pond.
A red-tail hawk fledgling, first time out of the nest, perches precariously on a fence rail looking uncertainly at a movement in the field below.
Learn more about Gordon Gund by visiting his artist page, or better yet, contact us by email, phone, or visiting the gallery in Basalt, Colorado!
