Working with stainless steel to capture something as organic as a tree is one of the more rewarding challenges I take on in the studio. A tree is all texture, all movement. Bark is rough, cracked, layered. Branches twist and reach in unpredictable directions. Leaves catch light differently depending on the season. None of that comes naturally in metal. Every bit of it has to be built by hand, one piece at a time.
My sequoia sculpture is a good example of how far the detail work can go. I wanted to capture that deeply furrowed, fibrous bark that old-growth sequoias are known for. So I built up the trunk using layers of welded steel, grinding back into each layer to create those vertical ridges and deep crevices. The result is a surface that genuinely looks and feels like bark when you run your hand across it. It took a long time. It was worth every hour.
The live oak presented a completely different set of problems. Live oaks are wide. They sprawl. Their branches reach out horizontally in ways that seem to defy gravity, sometimes stretching further across than the tree is tall. Capturing that sense of weight and reach in a wall sculpture meant thinking carefully about how each branch connects to the trunk and how the whole composition holds together structurally while still feeling like it could keep growing right off the edge of the wall.
Color is where trees really come alive in stainless steel. I use torch-fired patinas to create the full range of what you see in nature. Deep bronzes and warm ambers for autumn foliage, rich greens and teals for summer canopy, cool silvers for bare winter branches. The ginkgo pieces are especially striking because ginkgo leaves turn that brilliant, almost electric gold in the fall, and the iridescent heat patinas on stainless steel can capture that exact color. The tradeoff is that some of these more vivid iridescent colors are best kept indoors. Direct sunlight will fade them over time. If a piece is going outdoors, I work with colors in the gold, bronze, and natural steel range that hold up beautifully in any weather.
The tree of life sculptures tend to be the most personal commissions I receive. People come to me with stories about a tree in their grandmother's yard, a family crest, a sense of rootedness they want to carry into a new home. I listen to all of it. It shapes the way I design the roots, the way the branches divide, the overall silhouette. No two tree of life pieces look the same because no two stories are the same.
My ginkgo work spans several forms, from large wall-mounted branch compositions to smaller ornamental pieces. The ginkgo leaf has one of the most distinctive shapes in the plant world, that perfect fan with its split down the center. It translates beautifully into metal because the shape is bold enough to read clearly even at a distance, and the surface area gives me room to lay down rich, layered patinas.
Every metal tree sculpture in this collection is handcrafted from stainless steel in my studio in Durham, North Carolina. The steel itself is naturally weather resistant, so outdoor-safe pieces will not rust, chip, or deteriorate. If you have a particular tree species in mind or a vision for a custom tree sculpture, I would love to hear about it. Trees are endlessly varied, and I never get tired of finding new ways to bring them to life in steel.
