The thing about working with stainless steel is that it does not want to look like an animal. It wants to be flat. It wants to stay rigid. Every curve has to be coaxed out of it with heat and pressure and patience. When I am shaping compound curves, the kind you see in a lion's mane or a frog's rounded back, I am fighting the material's natural tendencies at every step. A single piece might need to curve in two or three directions simultaneously, and the only way to get there is to work it slowly, heating and bending and checking against reference photos until the shape feels right. There is no shortcut for that. You either put the time in or the piece looks stiff.
My dragon sculpture taught me more about patience than any piece before it. That piece has 1,583 individually cut, shaped, and layered scales. Each one was hand cut from stainless steel, ground to shape, then welded into place overlapping the one before it, just like real reptile scales. The whole process took months. People sometimes ask if I use laser cutters or CNC machines for work like that, and the answer is no. Every scale was cut with hand shears and shaped with a grinder. There is something about that level of hand work that gives the finished piece a quality you cannot replicate with machines. Each scale is slightly different, slightly imperfect, and that is what makes the whole surface come alive.
The lion was my first real attempt at a mammal, and it forced me to solve a problem I had been avoiding: fur. With fish and insects, the surfaces are relatively smooth or made up of repeating geometric shapes like scales or wing segments. But a lion's mane is chaos. It flows and twists and catches light from every angle. I ended up developing a technique where I cut thin strips of stainless, twisted them individually, and then layered them together to create that sense of thick, flowing hair. The mane alone took longer than many of my complete sculptures.
Color is where these pieces really come together. Every color you see on my animal sculptures is created using heat from torches applied directly to the stainless steel surface. No paints, no dyes, no coatings. When you heat stainless steel to specific temperatures, the surface oxidizes and produces colors that range from pale gold through deep blue to purple and back. The trick is controlling the heat precisely enough to place specific colors exactly where you want them. For the hummingbird, I needed that iridescent throat patch to shift from green to purple the way it does in real life. That meant working with the thinnest possible flame, moving slowly across the surface, building up color in layers. The feathers on that piece were all hand ground to shape using a pencil grinder, each one tapered and curved to mimic the way real feathers overlap and catch light.
Some of my animal work carries meaning beyond the artistic challenge. The pangolin is one of those pieces. Pangolins are the most trafficked mammals on Earth, and several species are critically endangered. When I built my pangolin sculpture, I wanted the piece to start conversations about that. The scales on a pangolin are made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails, and they overlap in this beautiful armor-like pattern that lends itself perfectly to metalwork. Each scale was individually shaped and layered, and the coloring was done to capture that warm amber tone you see in photographs of live pangolins. It is one of my favorite pieces because it does double duty: it is a technical challenge I am proud of, and it puts a spotlight on an animal most people have never heard of.
What connects all of these animal sculptures is the same fundamental question: how do you take a material that comes in flat, cold sheets and make it look like it is breathing? Whether it is the coiled tension in a rattlesnake's body, the mid-leap stretch of a tree frog, or the quiet alertness in a bird perched on a branch, every piece starts with studying how the real animal holds itself. I spend as much time looking at reference photos and videos as I do in the shop. Understanding the anatomy, the posture, the way weight shifts through the body. All of that research feeds into the metalwork, and it is the difference between a sculpture that looks like an animal and one that feels like an animal.
Every piece in this collection is handcrafted from 100% stainless steel in my studio in Durham, North Carolina. Most are wall hanging sculptures and safe for outdoor display. Stainless steel is naturally corrosion resistant, so these pieces hold up beautifully in all weather conditions without any maintenance. If you see something here that speaks to you, or if you have a particular animal in mind for a custom commission, I would love to hear from you. These creatures are what I was put on this earth to make.
