Roadrunner Sculpture
Welded Steel Bird Sculpture:
2018
This was a rather long project that I worked on over the span of two years as part of a steel sculpture class I took at my High school.
I came up with this idea as I had always generally wanted to create some sort of animal out of what would normally just have been scrap material.
I settled on a roadrunner bird as I felt like layered pieces of angled metal would be a good physical representation of their sleek form, and stacking them together would not only look pretty cool, but would also give the impression of motion and speed. The usage of the lawnmower blade was something I came up with mid-way through its construction. The sharp hook section of the blade made an excellent beak, and the large open hole made an excellent eye that was a great focal point for the piece as a whole.
For the baseplate, I wanted to give the impression that the bird was in motion, rather than sitting on a flat plate, so I opted for a set of buried concrete anchors to really set the bird as if it was running through the surrounding environment.
The finished bird was displayed at my High school for a few weeks before we moved it to its permanent location in my family’s front garden.
