Hummingbirds are so intricate and delicate yet fly with such precision and grace. They can hover, fly backwards, and their wings beat up to 80 times per second when flying and over 200 times per second during a courtship dive! Trying to capture that energy in a rigid material like stainless steel is the kind of contradiction that gets me excited. The metal is industrial and heavy but the goal is to make it feel weightless and alive.
It was fun to get in there with my pencil grinder and draw in all the little feathers. Each feather on this metal hummingbird was individually hand ground, which is tedious work but also the part where the sculpture starts to come alive. You go from a smooth piece of shaped steel to something that has texture and movement and suddenly reads as a real bird. That transition is one of my favorite moments in the whole process.
Designing this bird was certainly a challenge as compound curves are very difficult with stainless. So I had to find a way to create separate pieces that overlapped in a way that felt seamless. You don't want to see where one piece ends and another begins. You want to see a hummingbird.
Overall I love how this sculpture turned out! I later redesigned this hummingbird sculpture to be smaller for a client, so I now have two sizes available. See below for sizes.
This metal hummingbird sculpture is wall hanging, made entirely of stainless steel, colored using only heat patinas, and is completely safe to be kept outdoors!
