Sculpting – Cre8-Space

Jeff Carol Davenport, Sculptor, Part 2

Jeff has done it again! After her Pat Tillman sculpture was installed at Arizona State University in 2017, Jeff’s statue of Coach Bobby Winkles was unveiled there in April 2024. Plus, she’s been creating new art pieces every single day!

Jeff Carol Davenport looked around her studio, trying to see it through new eyes as she tidies up in anticipation of hosting VIPs from Arizona State University’s baseball program.

Keeping her studio neat is a constant challenge; pottery materials, paints and sculpting tools are scattered across various work stations. But she must get her creative space looking organized and welcoming; a big sculpting project is on the line!

Will she get the commission from ASU to sculpt a life-size likeness of beloved baseball Coach Bobby Winkles? What an opportunity that would be for Jeff!

Bobby Winkles coached ASU’s Sun Devils baseball team from 1958, when the school adopted the varsity sport, until 1971, taking the team to the national championship three times. He’s considered the architect of ASU’s baseball program… and also a legend.

When she had received an email two weeks before — asking if she was interested in the sculpting job — Jeff responded with an immediate “absolutely.”

When the three baseball reps were shown into Jeff’s detached art studio filled with colorful paintings, ceramics and sculptures, they immediately saw the maquette of Coach Winkles that Jeff had been working on. She has a gift for capturing faces in clay and she had Coach Winkles looking just like he did in a photo sent by the baseball committee.

Many artists won’t even sculpt a maquette as a prototype if they haven’t secured a contract. But Jeff does. She doesn’t mind doing a little work for a potential client without receiving money or without an upfront promise of getting the job. Not many people in any field think like that.

“They walked into my studio and seemed very happy with the maquette,” Jeff says. “They liked it, and I thought ‘this is going to be a go.’”

“Thanks so much,” one man said to Jeff. “We’re looking at two other artists and will be in touch.”

“That made me feel down,” Jeff says. “I thought, ‘maybe I won’t get the commission.’”

ASU players touch Jeff’s Patt Tillman sculpture before each game.

They knew that Jeff had already sculpted Pat Tillman, former ASU football star, for a life-size bronze sculpture installed at ASU, so that would hopefully help sell her to this committee. Yet, even with creating Pat Tillman’s sculpture, Jeff didn’t take the Coach Winkles prospective job for granted.

“I don’t expect these things,” she says.

Pitchfork in ASU’s Mountain America stadium.

Jeff had also created the bronze Pitchfork sculpture placed in ASU’s Mountain America stadium.

Her mode is to keep working, no matter what, and that’s what she did until the day in early 2024 when she received word that the committee had selected her to sculpt Coach Winkles!

At the unveiling ceremony in April 2024, one of the committee members said to Jeff, “The minute we walked in and saw the maquette, we knew you were the artist for the job. We had to follow our formal selection process, though.”

“But, they knew,” Jeff says, enjoying the thought of their immediate acceptance of her skills, even if they couldn’t say anything at the time.
Those are the lows and highs for artists who put their art out into the world. The highs and lows never really stop, even for seasoned artists, but they hopefully become less intense with time and experience.

Unveiling Coach Winkles’ sculpture at entrance to Phoenix Municipal Stadium.

Jeff was on a high at the unveiling ceremony and she was honored to meet Bobby Winkles’ family, including his grandchildren.

She considers her Bobby Winkles sculpture to be her “star accomplishment.”

Coach Winkles family and friends celebrate unveiling.

“But what about Pat Tillman’s sculpture?,” I say. “That’s a star accomplishment, too.”

“Yes, but Pat’s sculpture is in an area of the ASU stadium where mainly the staff and team have access, so the general public doesn’t always see it. Coach Winkles’ sculpture is on the third-base concourse at the entrance of the Phoenix Municipal Stadium, ASU’s home park. Everyone attending a game will walk by Coach Winkles’ statute when entering and leaving the stadium.”

This news article from ASU gives a great overview of the sculpture and its unveiling celebration.

ASU plans to add more sculptures on the stadium’s walkway and they’ve indicated they want Jeff to be involved.

“Adding new sculptures may not happen for a while,” Jeff says. “These things don’t always happen fast, but I’m happy that more good things might be coming.”

Jeff Carol Davenport’s tireless creative force was on full display in my first spotlight of her in 2017. Back then she was still teaching ceramics at Sandra Day O’Connor High School in Phoenix, counting down the days until she could retire and throw herself completely into sculpting, both bronze and ceramics.

While teaching high schoolers during the day, Jeff’s time in her home studio was busy, busy, busy.

Now that she’s retired, she’s unstoppable!

Jeff might be your creative kindred spirit if you wake up wanting to get to work on a project and go to bed thinking about tomorrow’s projects… while art ideas pop into your mind night and day.

She’s usually working on several pieces of art in different mediums, spread out in her studio at designated work areas: the pottery wheel area, the glazing area, the jewelry-making area, the painting area.

Jeff’s detached art studio filled with supplies, paintings, prototypes and inspiration.

“Making art fulfills the need that I apparently have,” Jeff says, “to always be creating and be productive. Creativity breeds creativity.”

Since retiring from teaching in May 2022, her production rate has sky-rocketed, just as she had yearned for during those working years. Jeff paints, makes ceramics, creates sculptures to be cast in bronze — managing them through every step of the casting process — and now makes jewelry. She’s even learning to weld!

Yet, as productive as she is, there’s never enough time to make all the beautiful things flooding her brain.

Jeff and her husband Mike have an off-grid vacation home in New Mexico that they’re building by themselves…and they bought another nearby lot so Jeff is now hankering to build a small dwelling there, too. By hand!

Jeff welding a base for one of her sculptures.

She somehow remains focused on her multiple art projects but one distraction she finds pleasant is her two-year-old granddaughter, Adaliya, who lives with Jeff’s son, Jeff, and his wife Aiya in Flagstaff. (Jeff, the mom, is also a hunter and for years has gone on multiple Elk and deer hunts with her son Jeff.)

When not with family, Jeff is in her studio making things like:
• Branded ceramic mugs as corporate gifts for her son Cori’s clients
• Ceramic bells
• Small branded ceramic coffee cups and bee earrings for a local boutique
• Paintings of giant saguaros that live near home in New River, AZ
• Small animals from clay to fire at her next Wood-fire Workshop in Northern Arizona
• Maquettes of commissioned statues to be enlarged and cast at the local foundry (where Jeff worked for 20 years)

Most of Jeff’s art is inspired by her Sonoran Desert surrounds, where she grew up and has lived her entire life: 66 years so far.

She has a distinct aesthetic style, able to create adorable desert animals like javelina or bunny rabbits that look soft and realistic, even in bronze.
Sure, she’d like to participate in some of the annual winter art shows in Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Wickenberg. She plans to continue applying to those shows until the organizers recognize her tenacity and invite her to exhibit.

Jeff showing off her small javelina sculpture.

But Jeff doesn’t want fame and fortune at this stage in her life. She just wants to keep making all her wonderful creations and have people appreciate them… and purchase them so she can buy more supplies and make more beautiful things!

“I don’t know how to get where I’d like to be,” Jeff says. “I don’t look at rejections, though. Instead I look at what works for me. Like the Bobby Winkles sculpture. I just keep working to get those kind of jobs. In the meantime, I keep my creativity going and keep making art.”

STUDIO

Jeff admits her studio isn’t organized like one might see in a magazine. Stuff is everywhere, stacked in containers, stuffed into drawers, sitting on desks and tables, all akimbo. But it works for Jeff.

“I have Dis-organizational Organization,” she says with a chuckle. Her different work areas may be cluttered but she gets lots of work done at each one.
“I’m a visual person so it helps me to see my supplies. If I were to organize them into a tidy little space, I’d probably lose everything. If my glazes are on the table, I’m more productive versus having to go search out where I put things.”

Coach Winkles in the wax stage of the lost wax method.

If she puts things away she forgets about them.

“I found a box of jewelry-making supplies at a yard sale and was going through it,” Jeff says, “when my neighbor Brent suggested I just offer them a price for the whole box, and I did. The other day I found that box and started pulling out silver solder and some cabochons, which I can use in pieces right now. But I had forgotten about the supplies in that box! What else in the studio is tucked into boxes that I’ve forgotten about?!”

Coach Winkles bronze sculpture in process.

The cost of materials is a huge part of making art for any artist, especially when they’re trying to set prices for their work. Also included are the thousands of hours of training and dedication that an artist puts into mastering their craft. As patrons of creative people, we’re buying that skill and expertise when we purchase a piece of their art.

“It sometimes feels like I’m paying people to buy my art,” Jeff laughs, “because maybe I can never get back the money I‘ve put into all my endeavors.” She has multiple pottery wheels, mounds of clay, several kilns, and materials for jewelry that include precious gems and fine metals. The cost of building a creative space to work in must also be part of the calculation.

“For one of the ceramic bells I make, it’s not just about how much clay the bell takes, “ Jeff says, “it’s also about electricity to fire the kiln, studio space, and the time it takes to sculpt and then assemble the finished product.”

Every little expense adds up, especially when she’s working across multiple mediums. Luckily Jeff and Mike love to shop at yard sales and thrift stores and that helps in financing her art.

STAND-OUT SCULPTOR

Of course more good things, and more great sculpture commissions, are coming to Jeff.

No other sculptor can produce what she does for what she charges.

“I provide a great product for the cost,” Jeff says. “No one else would do what I do, like making prototypes without an agreement in place. My prices are reasonable. I come highly recommended and know how to manage my time and meet any client’s deadline. I always do things on time.”

Coach Winkles sculpture going into place at ASU’s stadium.

Jeff has been building a reputation for doing these public projects for decades. After working at the local foundry for 20 years, she knows every process of casting bronze. She can do the physical work of mold making and cleaning seams, etc. Being local, she can meet her clients at the foundry at any time during the process and explain each stage. For local clients, delivery fees are not as expensive as delivery costs would be from an out-of-state artist.

Gift from the Vancouver K9 PD to a donor, sculpted by Jeff from her prior life-sized memorial.

“People respond to my style,” Jeff says. “My work is realistic but I have a really nice style. Plus my large body of work with sculptures installed around the state and elsewhere demonstrate my expertise and talent. I can stand up with the best of artists.”

What Jeff doesn’t mention is her positive attitude and sunny outlook. Or her kindness. She is a pleasure to be around and a complete sweetheart for her clients to deal with.

Jeff is a sculptor who can design in a short period of time with minimal input from clients and nail their concept from the start. It’s rare that a client asks her to redo her original design. Jeff’s relationship with the folks at the foundry make it easy to process any statue from start to finish. She knows the foundry, its people and equipment. They know her and trust her.

Jeff’s pig sculpture for a popular breakfast spot.

Jeff does all of this with a smile, offering great ideas and delivering more than she promised.

Jeff has created two sculptures for Creighton University, a Jesuit Catholic institution in Phoenix with a large focus on their nursing program. St. Ignatius was the founder of the Jesuits and his sculpture stands at the university’s entrance.

Jeff’s sculpture of St. Ignatius at Creighton University in Phoenix.

Jeff Sculpture of Billy, Creighton’s mascot, on their campus in Phoenix.

As a sculptor, Jeff has much to recommend her for any size projects. And that’s just her sculpting. She is as talented in her other artistic pursuits.

The Boys and Girls Club of Flagstaff commissioned Jeff to
create this sculpture as an award.

Popular by Vote

Jeff’s sculptures often capture the public’s imagine and take on a life of their own. For instance, she created Learning Together, a sculpture of a boy and his dog, modeling the figures off of her son, Jeff, and their family pet, Cisco.

Jeff’s sculpture Learning Together was modeled on her son, Jeff, and pet Cisco.

“We got Cisco as a rescue,” Jeff says, “and in the sculpture you can feel his anticipation of Jeff throwing the ball. My son was known for taking his shoes off wherever he went, so to add to the story I placed his shoes at the base of the sculpture. Also, if you look in the eyes of the dog, you can see the reflection of the boy.”

Three of these sculptures stand in Arizona; in Oro Valley, Prescott Valley and Mesa.

“The Learning Together sculpture in Prescott Valley at the Civic Center overwhelmingly won the Public Choice Award with the purchase agreement for the city,” Jeff says. “The one in Mesa also won the public choice award.”

So add “award-winning sculptor” to Jeff’s resume!

WOODFIRE WORKSHOP

For the last five summers, Jeff has made her way up I-17 to Flagstaff and the Northern Arizona’s ceramic workshop comprised of a series of wood-fired kilns set beneath towering Ponderosa pines. She attends the two-week class, working from sunup to sundown every day, ready to fire as many pieces as possible in the large kilns.

All workshop participants pull together, taking turns to load and unload the various brick kilns day in and day out to ensure everyone’s complete collection is fired by closing day. Participants create all types of pieces, from dish ware to vases and everything in between, when they’re not tending to the kiln.

Jeff made a promise to herself that she would sculpt one small animal every day of the year to take to Flagstaff.

“I’m known for my animals in the kiln,” Jeff says. “I started out just wanting to make a quick clay sketch but then started spending an hour a day on each one, so I’ve slowed down on them and plan to pick out my top 50 to take to Flagstaff in the summer.”

Those small sculptures could be the start of something bigger. “I can scan each one and enlarge it to make something big, like a bronze statue,” Jeff says.

Jeff keeps the “living” wood-fired kiln breathing.

Often it seems like the older people put in the most effort, but maybe that’s just because inexperienced students are surprised by the amount of physical work it takes to fire a piece in a wood-fired kiln, which is much different than using an electric kiln.

People have to physically load the kilns, crawling inside to stack pieces just right, and folks must also stay throughout the night to keep the temperature up.

“Working with a wood-fired kiln is enormous work,” Jeff says. “A kiln is a living thing. It must have oxygen and wood. A kiln might stall in the middle of the night and you have to get it back to breathing.”

Many workshop participants have been attending for years, some longer than Jeff, and this group of returnees have the process down. They know what needs to be done and they make it happen.

“We have a big chart on the wall of what we need to load, unload, bisque fire, etc.,” Jeff says. “There’s nothing worse than someone not having fired all their pieces by the end.”

Jeff prepares ceramic items for months in advance to take to the workshop, and she brings home a good many beautiful pieces, but she’s also simultaneously making other items in other mediums.

BOUTIQUE WARES

Sharron Brenning, an artist friend of Jeff’s known for her lovely paintings of Native American children, opened a boutique in Verde Valley, taking over space in her son’s adjacent gun shop, “Deuces & Aces.”

Sharron’s little shop is cleverly called “On the Softer Side” and has a flower-and-bee theme. Sharron asked Jeff to make tiny coffee cups with a Bee motif to use as necklace pendants. And little bee medallions for earrings. Sharron offers handmade soaps in her shop and asked Jeff to make ceramic soap dishes to pair with the soaps. To complement the gun shop’s theme, Jeff makes a ring holder with a large-gauge bullet as the center post.

“Sharron and I are just starting out with this collaboration,” Jeff says, “and we’re learning what sells and what prices to charge. She’s trying to make a go by offering unique handmade products as a draw for customers.”

Display of Jeff’s coffee cups made into pendants.

the PAINTed desert

Jeff has been painting for years, though it sometimes takes a backseat to ceramics and sculpting. There are only 24 hours in a day, after all.

Sadly, one massive Saguaro on Carefree Highway in Cave Creek went down a few months after Jeff painted it. It can takes hundreds of years for a cactus to grow to that size. Saguaro cacti are only found in the Sonoran Desert, nowhere else in the world, and they are a protected species. In this case, the cactus’ demise is even more sad because Jeff suspects it was possibly removed to make room for power lines.

Jeff painted/captured this beauty’s image before it sadly went down after 100s of years.

If a Saguaro must be removed, it is usually carefully uprooted, gently transported and then planted elsewhere, as part of the laws to protect them, but moving a cactus as large as this one must be impossible, hence its treatment.

“All the arms were cut off,” Jeff says, “and were left piled up next to the road.”

Thank goodness Jeff preserved the cactus’ image before it went down.
“I feel by painting the cactus, I’ve documented it in history, in a way. To think of all the years and progress that saguaro had lived through. It’s sad.”

This cactus lives on 16th Street just north of carefree highway.

And here’s the painting from the sketch.

BELLS atolling

How did Jeff come up with the idea of making the ceramic bells, one of her more recent and popular inventions? She received a wedding invitation from two former students who had met in her class. After much thought, Jeff decided the bell would be a perfect ceramic gift to represent how the couple had met.

“We’re going to their wedding next month so I made the bell and inscribed their names and wedding date on it. I also made one for my son Cori who married Rachel in July. People love these bells, and every time I post them on social media, they’re bought up quickly.”

Perhaps people want a piece of affordable art made by the great sculptor Jeff Carol Davenport, who is making a name for herself through her public sculpture commissions. Plus, Jeff prices her work so reasonably, charging only $40 for one of her handmade bells; a true bargain for a handmade piece of art.

OFF-GRID VACATION HOME

Several years ago, Jeff and Mike bought a lot in a remote neighborhood near Ramah, New Mexico. Regulations allow only “sheds” on-sight; a “shed” is a building of 200-square-feet or less. Jeff and Mike have made trips to the lot and built an off-grid 12 x 16-foot shed/cabin/bungalow from scratch, and they love how it’s cozy enough for them plus their dogs Eli and Maya.

“It’s like a hunter’s cabin,” Jeff says of the little space outfitted in blue pine walls and rustic flooring, and made comfortable with a large bed and pretty decor. “We bought another property up there and will build another little place so friends and family can come visit.”

When Jeff says they’ll build another hunter’s cabin, she’s gleefully saying that she can’t wait to get up there and cut boards, build the walls, put on a roof, outfit a porch, etc. She’s eager to build the new shed/cabin with her own hands.

DAD, WADE HOFFMAN

If Jeff’s dad, Wade Hoffman, is any indication of her potential longevity, she could have many more years of good health in which to create things. Born in 1932 in North Carolina, Jeff’s dad is 92 years old and still working two days a week as a security guard.

Mr. Hoffman and the 1930 Packard he’ll restore with Jeff.

“We want to put a 35 x 40-foot building in our backyard,” Jeff says, “to act as an apartment for my dad and a garage where we can restore his 1930 740 Roadster Packard, which he’s owned since he was 17 years old. I’m looking for a civil engineer to get the building started.”

Mr. Hoffman, a veteran of the Korean war, has all the parts for the Packard and has restored individual pieces over the years. Eventually they’ll transport the car and its parts to Jeff’s house so she and her father can restore it.

“My dad bought a travel trailer to live in as we’re building his apartment and garage,” Jeff laughs. “Parked in our yard, he says he’ll be our onsite security guard.”

PETS aplenty

Also onsite at Jeff and Mike’s house, in addition to their dogs Maya and Eli, are chickens in a coop and their two aged turtles, Indi and Tony, who live under a Paolo Verde tree in the front yard. Indi and Tony love a lettuce snack and an occasional spraying with the water hose.

Jeff has had chickens for years and one of her hens recently hatched two rooster chicks.

“I felt badly that only two of her eggs hatched,” Jeff says, “so I ordered four baby chickens and snuck them under her in the middle of the night. When she woke up she thought she had six babies.”

Jeff manages to care for her husband, her grown children and grandchild, her turtles, dogs, and chickens, all while producing great amounts of great art. And enjoying life with a big laugh throughout it all.

the FUTURE’s so bright

In between sculpting, painting, ceramic projects, building “sheds,” assisting her father, encouraging other artists, tending to her animals with lots of love and caring for her extended family, Jeff has begun experimenting with making jewelry. She took a course in college and has now taken a local refresher course.
“I made four silver rings, one with a cabochon, and then came home and made turquoise rings,” she says of her refresher course experience.

Jeff plans to grow her jewelry-making skills while also pursuing participation in local art shows and maybe getting her work into a gallery in Cave Creek, a popular western-themed town near Jeff’s home.

“At this stage of my life,” Jeff says, “I’m comfortable because I don’t need the money. If money comes, that’s good. But I don’t make art for the money. If I was doing it just for the money, I simply would not be doing it. There’s something deeper than financial gain for me.”

Hear, hear!

And there’s something deeper for the folks lucky enough to experience Jeff and her art… in all its many forms.

RESOURCES

Website: jeffcaroldavenport.com
Instagram: @jeffcaroldavenport

Shawna Scarpitti, Collagist/Sculptress

She’s Wild at Art

When I first saw Shawna’s large, bright canvases from a distance, I had to get down there… and fast… even if it meant passing up many other artists’ booths. Up close, her bold, singing work did not disappoint and when Shawna came around the corner with her wild hair barely contained and her stride full of joy, I instantly knew her natural glee perfectly matched her art. And who wouldn’t be drawn to both!

As an undergraduate at Auburn, Shawna was a nude model for painters at the nearby Columbus Museum of Art in Georgia.

“It took some getting used to,” Shawna says, “ but I made $20 an hour, the most I’d ever made.”

Her body isn’t the only thing she’s bared for art.

This past December, Shawna quit her job as an art therapist, packed a van with art supplies and home furnishings, and drove from Jensen Beach, Florida, to Scottsdale, Arizona, to exhibit her tissue paper pieces at the Arizona Fine Art Expo, a 10-week show housed in a giant white, u-shaped tent.

Shawna in her Expo booth, shared with her partner Gregory, a glassblower.

Every year from January to March, more than 100 artists occupy booths at the show and paint, sculpt, make jewelry, etc., in their spaces, sharing their work and techniques with guests seven days a week.

Shawna took a leap of faith to try her hand at being a full-time artist, encouraged by her boyfriend Greg Tomb, a masterful glass blower who has made a living from his art for years by traveling to shows around the country.

So, newish relationship, new “job,” new city, new condo… all at once. Hello, Overwhelm.

“January was a stinker of a month,” Shawna says, laughing. “Setting up a booth with a partner for the first time was stressful as we got used to each other. And traffic at the show was slow, so we naturally worried about money.”

By February, Shawna had made friends throughout the giant tent and she and Greg were grooving as a couple.

“I’m the type who has to be connected with people,” Shawna says. “If I’m making art, I must also be doing something to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

She’s a cheerful and kind spirit who gives and gives of herself. Her artwork, created by gluing colorful tissue paper onto canvases, is an outward sign of her inward joy. Full of happy, bright colors, her pieces cause continuous smiles.

After getting a Master’s degree in art therapy, Shawna has been a nationally board-certified art therapist for 20 years. She honed her skills working with tissue paper while showing clients how to express their emotions through their hands; even if it meant they used only black. The simple act of wanting to switch to a color other than black could signal a big breakthrough for a client.

How does someone help traumatized people day after day without succumbing to trauma themselves? Especially someone like Shawna who is sensitive and attuned to others’ feelings and energy.

“I’ve been lucky to work for companies that offer insurance with mental health benefits for employees, and really good self-care is a must,” Shawna says, with a chuckle. “Plus, helping people freely express in 2- and 3-dimensions while encouraging them to connect to their imaginations and innate creativity is very rewarding.”

Shawna was born in Alliance, Ohio, but grew up in Jensen Beach, Florida, influencing the definite coastal feel in some of her work. From the age of 2, Shawna chose crayons and paint over dolls and TV. Her mother knew, even then, that Shawna was an artist.

Shawna used her therapy training to acclimate to her new nomadic life and the self-contained art community that pops up each winter in the Sonoran desert.

When people show interest in her work, she delights in telling them how she does it. Oftentimes, they want to learn to do it.

“After several women expressed interest in doing tissue paper art, I put up a class sign-up sheet in my booth and it filled up in less than a week!”

Shawna has given several classes during the show in a classroom available to artists for just such activities, and she’s an excellent teacher/coach/cheerleader. I was lucky enough to take her “Tissue Paper Art 101” class and admired how she put everyone at ease about being creative.

“First thing we’re going to do is take off our judgement hat and throw it out of this room,” Shawna says.

Animated, she tosses her imaginary hat like a frisbee and smiles big. Her long hair, extra curly and full, moves when she does, accentuating her vibrant personality.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The room we’re in has walls but no ceiling, except for the big white tent overhead. We can hear cars on Scottsdale Road, but Shawna can easily be heard telling us about the nature of Bleeding Art tissue paper, the medium for her artwork. When the paper gets wet, colors bleed onto adjacent papers, creating unpredictable patterns.

Shawna then uses a sponge brush to gently apply a mixture of Elmer’s glue and water, adhering the paper to a canvas. Or she might use a bristle brush to smooth it into place. In this beginner’s class, our only objective is to experiment.

In class with Shawna, fellow student Annie and a big mound of tissue paper!

“Cut it or tear,” she says, “there is no wrong way. You’re learning about the paper’s qualities with every piece of tissue you add.”

After working with tissue paper for decades, Shawna has mastered composing images, although she admits controlling how the colors bleed is nearly impossible. Coat hangers hold folds of tissue paper already splashed with water and fully dried. Working when the paper is wet can be difficult, so Shawna always has lots of dried, prepared paper on hand.

Greg’s talent isn’t limited to blowing remarkably beautiful glass bowls. He’s a good carpenter, too, and built Shawna a rolling cart to hold her art supplies, including glitter glue, paints, tiny canvases on wooden easels and all sorts of tiny sparkly notions to add to a completed piece of art. The cart even has a handy rail on one side for displaying her many coat hangers of inspiring papers.

In class, we get very quiet as we experiment with collages of tissue on a thick piece of paper, to get a feel for how to handle the glue, paper and active colors. The moistened foundation papers tend to warp or curl.

“No worries about curling papers,” Shawna assures us. “Once it’s dry, simply put it inside a large coffee table book overnight and it will emerge flat.”

After experimenting, we tackle covering a canvas with tissue. Shawna has several canvas sizes available. I grab a 10-inch square and spot some prepared papers with orange, white, pink and yellow. The brighter the better is my motto. Plus, I have visions of Shawna’s art in my head. Using her prepared paper means my piece of artwork is a collaboration with her.

The piece I made in Shawna’s class using her prepared paper.

Two hours fly by. Shawna finishes our partially-dried artwork with a spray acrylic in either mat or gloss. It also provides UV protection.

I enjoy the class so much, I’m hoping to be able to take her Intermediate course before she packs up and goes back to Florida.

IMG_3087 (1) — One wall of Shawna’s booth holds the smaller items she collages and paints.

Canvases aren’t the only surfaces Shawna covers in tissue paper and paint. She makes one-of-a-kind notecards and decorates the covers on planning calendars and bound journals, turning them into useful works of art. I bought one of her journals to use in a writing workshop my daughter Jaime and I are taking in Paris this June.

“Art is integral to who I am,” Shawna says. “I find a natural flow between creating therapeutic space for the art-making process for others and for myself. I’m in constant connection to my creative core, even when addressing an envelope, cooking or starting a new art project.”

Sculpture is another 3-D art form Shawna relishes as she uses organic materials to evoke the Divine Feminine. “Nature is rarely linear and my sculptures are a celebration of all that is feminine, soulful and passionate,” Shawna says.

As an undergraduate, she dove into sculpting with wood, clay and stone, and sometimes using found objects to create assemblage pieces. In fact, her senior thesis was based on a theme for nine large-scale assemblage sculptures. But when she started working, sculpting took a back seat, even to her collage work.

Two years ago, Shawna’s best friend, Susannah, fell in love with the carved wood, alabaster and marble pieces Shawna had created in early 90s. “Susannah asked me who had done the carvings and she couldn’t stop touching them,” Shawna says. “When I described how I carved them, she nearly flipped because she’s only known my tissue paper collages. She emphatically told me I must, must, must get back into sculpture as soon as possible. In fact, she made me promise I would.”

The Expo, a creative place to the max, is the perfect spot for Shawna to sculpt, paint, and, most importantly, make good on her promise to Susannah.

Shawna is wise to acknowledge her need for being emotionally connected with the people around her. We all have that need to some extent, yet some of us don’t always honor it… and we’re the poorer for it.

A giver, Shawna has created a new life and a new relationship that gives back. She credits Greg with evoking the courage she needed to embark on this current desert adventure. In fact, he convinced her to see the possibility of taking a two-month hiatus from her job last summer and travel to New York where he would rent an apartment, giving Shawna the freedom to produce her large-scale pieces for two art shows in which she and Greg would participate.

Shawna’s employer did not offer anything like a hiatus and she expected a big fat “no.” But when she asked, they said yes!

Greg believed in her work enough to know she could pursue it, and they could share a life on the road as partners in every sense of the word. He also believed in her talent enough to hand-build the large canvases for her work.

“It was amazing and scary to wake up each day and only have to make art,” Shawna says. During those two months, she learned a lot about art, about Greg, about herself and about the public’s reaction to art.

When Greg suggested they both apply to exhibit at the Arizona Fine Art Expo, Shawna saw the stars aligning. That’s when she made the decision to leave her job of nearly four years and dive head first into being a professional artist. These last four months have been eye-opening, frightening and a catalyst for her next stage.

Recently, Shawna scheduled an art therapist job interview for early April back home. “I’m hopeful to go back to work full-time in South Florida,” Shawna says. “I will definitely continue to do my art on the side, and exhibit at shows.”

Greg has a few shows lined up for the remainder of 2018, giving them an opportunity to flex and strengthen their intermittent long-distance relationship with FaceTime and other technological wonders to stay connected.

Shawna sounds at peace with their future. “We have plans to join forces down the road,” she says.

I’ll miss Shawna when she’s back in Florida, but I have no doubts she’ll brighten the lives of her clients through art therapy and retail art therapy.

Shawna’s extraordinary parents, Jim and Melody, taught her to always be kind. She takes kindness one step further and is always loving, even with people she doesn’t know.

On a daily basis, Shawna bares her soul to those who are lucky enough to be near her, and she gives us permission to open our souls and be creative, be vulnerable, be colorful, be loved and see the joy in life.

Shawna shows us how to throw our judgement hats out the window, and we’re the richer for it.

DragonflyDetail — Detail of the dragonfly above.

Education

Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in sculpture from Auburn University.

Master of Arts in Art Therapy from Ursuline College, Cleveland, Ohio.

Resources

http://www.shawnscarpitti.com

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/ShawnaScarpittiFineArt

Pixels – http://pixels.com/profiles/shawna-scarpitti.html

Instagram – @shawnamariescarpitti

Twitter – @seascarp

Photo Gallery

Kit Carson: In-Between

Kit Carson built Camp Cactus, his stone-cottage house in New River, Arizona, in 1993, and created there until 2016. He is now living in a rental house in Prescott, Arizona, while his new home, Cortez Camp, is being built on a lot just four blocks from downtown Prescott. I wanted to see Kit’s temporary creative space in his rental home, so I visited him on Super Bowl Sunday 2018, and wrote the update below. When Cortez Camp is completed later this year, and Kit’s new workshop is outfitted, I’ll return to Prescott and will share here all the delightful artistic touches to be found in his new home and creative space.

A Moveable Menagerie

Kit Carson built Camp Cactus, his stone-cottage house in New River, Arizona, in 1993, and sold it in 2016. He is temporarily renting a house in Prescott, Arizona, while his new home, Cortez Camp, is being built on a lot just four blocks from downtown Prescott. I wanted to see Kit’s temporary creative space in his rental home, so I visited him on Super Bowl Sunday 2018. When Cortez Camp is completed later this year, and Kit’s new workshop is outfitted, I’ll return to Prescott and will share here all the delightful artistic touches to be found in his new home and creative space.

Kit spends day and night focusing his creativity on making jewelry and sculptures. He appears laid-back in his faux leather jacket, cowboy hat and boots, but at 68, Kit hasn’t lost his energetic drive to always be producing… something. A true cowboy at heart, when Kit has ventured from his roots, he always returns to the Arizona desert.

At the age of 16, Kit was deeply influenced by reading The Prophet, which led him to read Thoreau and Whitman. As Kit aged, his Philosopher-Artist sensibilities were honed ever sharper; his wisdom now seeps out in aphorisms, a hobby of his, and he often puts them on his jewelry. For instance, the inside of a bracelet might read, “Don’t fence me in,” or “Life is good.”

Kit likes to say, “Every good artist has a sketchy past.” Ba-dum-bump. His past may be sketchy, but Kit still has his youthful, lanky physique and mischievous eyes.

“Age is an attitude,” Kit says. “The older I get, the younger I am.”

Kit’s Temporary Cre8-Space

Kit’s quaint, aged, 900-square foot rental house is white with brown trim. A white picket fence encloses a charming, tiny front yard. Inside the living room, honey-colored wood floors creak comfortingly as we walk. Metal art hangs on every wall, and antique wooden chairs with tooled leather look as though they’ve been in place for 50 years. His well-loved furnishings fit the house perfectly as vintage suitcases sit under tables and atop shelves.

An acoustic guitar is propped on his desk. “I’ll pick up my guitar at any time and sing a song. Singing makes me stop thinking,” Kit says. Otherwise, his mind is always working (or more like playing), envisioning jewelry pieces or metal sculptures.

Kit’s temporary workshop just off his living room looks like it’s been there since the house was built. He gives me a tour and allows me to video him while he’s engraving a metal bracelet cut from an old can with orange paint on it.

“I make these bracelets, part of my Romantic Rust line, out of old, red tool boxes and license plates, too,” Kit says. “Painted metal from the 70s, or earlier, is best for these pieces. When I use a raw-hide hammer to shape bracelets made from newer painted metal, the paint will chip off.”

Kit’s two essential engraving tools are his vice and nematic engraver. Watch the video below to see how his sophisticated rotating vice and the electric engraver make engraving look easy. It’s not easy. Not at all. Especially creating the intricate scrolls and desert scenes, trademarks of his art. Kit has clearly mastered his engraving technique.

Kit’s workspace is about six feet wide and 11 feet long. Stations for engraving, cutting, assembling and soldering face one wall while on shelves case after case of tiny drawers hold teeny tool pieces and jewelry parts. A window over his main counter provides lots of natural light, but he also has multiple lamps clamped to every work station. The workshop is comfortable and efficient.

A large table in his living room along the front wall holds stones and gems, allowing Kit space to play around with composition of the jewels’ placement on earrings, pendants or bracelets.

Starting Out

When Kit decided to pursue art, his mother, Paula Carson, gave him good advise. “From day one,” she told Kit, “run your art like a business. Know how much you pay for supplies, add in labor costs and never sell for less than what you have in a piece.”

Kit has lived by that guidance and under his means, which meant he was able to produce art and support himself, sometimes barely being able to pay his $60-a-month rent in the early years. But he kept at it, worked on a rickety stool pumping out his handmade, unique designs, growing his business and then shrinking his business to a perfectly manageable size. To this day, Kit continues to reinvent himself and how he markets his art.

In the beginning, he branched out from just making jewelry, which has always been his core, to working with drawings, sign painting, calligraphy on signs and wedding invitations, watercolors, wood and rock sculptures, and engraving for local jewelry stores. “I couldn’t make a living and make art while working for $3 an hour at the bronze factory,” Kit says. “I needed a steady income and I knew I could have constant business by offering several artistic services.”

Kit didn’t know anything about running a business.

“Early on, I sent my jewelry to a gallery and didn’t include anything in the package. No list of items. No pricing,” Kit says. The gallery tracked him down from his return address and called him, asking, “What is this?”

“It’s my jewelry,” Kit replied.

“How much are you selling it for?,” they asked.

“What do you think it’d sell for,” Kit laughs, recalling the conversation.

“I didn’t know. They suggested how much each piece might sell for and I learned a lot by them walking me through the process.”

That gallery, the first one he approached, sold his jewelry.

Jumping into the commercial art world without any guidance meant Kit did some things wrong, and other things right. But he had courage and belief in his art. For 43 consecutive years, he has made a living from his art.

“One job leads to another job,” Kit says, “and I always make time for jobs.” Like when Fender saw his his skull jewelry on his website and contacted him about designing a “DIA DE LOS MUERTOS,” or Day of the Dead, Telecaster guitar for them. Naturally, Kit said yes. Fender collaborated with Kit, and other artists Dan Lawrence, Ron Thorn, Tom Arndt and Chris Flemming to create the most expensive customer guitar Fender ever produced. While some folks wondered if the guitar would sell, Fender ended up making and selling three of them.

Kit lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for 12 years. He got his career going by having the courage to jump smack dab into the middle of the Santa Fe art community where he knew no one. His business took off so well, it eventually earned $250,000 a year. Kit opened an office in Santa Fe and sold his art to 270 stores and galleries across the U.S. He was able to hire several employees to assist in producing his jewelry.

“One day I was in Boston and passed a store,” Kit says. “A bunny pin in the window caught my eye. It was a knock-off of mine. I went inside and told the clerk the pin was a poor-quality knock-off and I wanted them to remove it. The clerk said, ‘Oh, Hi, Mr. Carson. So nice to meet you. That is your pin.’ I was so disappointed in the quality of the work, that it had my name on it, and I hadn’t stopped it from going out the door. I went back to Santa Fe and closed my business. I wanted to be an artist in his studio knowing every piece that goes out is the best I can do.”

Kit firmly believes the two best things he ever did was to go into business big time and to get out of business big time. He had jumped into making art with both feet and little business know-how, yet he managed to have more successes than failures. Luckily, he’s happy to share the following lessons learned with aspiring artists of all mediums:

Quit your job. “Working a job will only take a new artist away from building their skills and their business.”

Don’t get married. “I knew two friends who wanted to work in art at the same time I was starting out and they got their girlfriends pregnant. They married and took other jobs to support their families. Of course, I got married later, too, so I didn’t listen to my own advice.”

Study an artist. Kit says find an artist whose work is of interest and then take weekend workshops with them. “You can learn more in a weekend with an artist than you can in an entire college course,” Kit says. “I’m an open book and will share my techniques with anybody.” Kit learned some jewelry-making techniques in the jewelry program at University of Oregon, Eugene. He also took night classes and weekend workshops.

Believe in yourself. “Artists must believe in themselves. I believed in myself,” Kit says. “That’s why I was able to build a business and stay self-employed. You have to discipline yourself to make a product, and another one. When you have bills to pay, that’s incentive enough to sit down and create.”

Find your voice. “An artist must find the core of their voice and they must have the ability to resolve abstract composition,” Kit says. He developed a voice early on and started engraving his drawings of bunnies, horses and desert scenes onto jewelry. “My jewelry stood out because not many people engraved their sketches into jewelry,” Kit says.

After 10 years in business, Kit was able to hire an assistant and has had several over the years. He trusts his employees and looks for enthusiasm when hiring. “I can teach them skills, but not enthusiasm,” Kit says. “They must also be able to tolerate failing and pushing through. Failures happen all the time, pieces don’t turn out the way we expect, but we keep creating.”

Currently, Sandy operates his website and Etsy shop; Halle in Denver constructs his jewelry from parts he sends her; and Louis, a glass artist from Prescott, works with Kit in his studio.

Growing Up

Kit was born and raised on Champie Ranch, a dude ranch, near Castle Hot Springs and Lake Pleasant, northwest of Phoenix, Arizona. His dad had given flying lessons during WWII and had spotted the ranch from the air. Growing up, Kit’s family didn’t have a phone, but they did have electricity and a radio, on which Kit as a six-year-old first heard Elvis Presley.

At the height of Gunsmoke’s popularity on TV, James Arnez, who played Sheriff Matt Dillon, brought his family to stay at Champie Ranch for a couple of weeks. Kit and his three brothers enjoyed swimming with “Matt Dillon,” and when James Arnez showed them his six-shooter, Kit was more interested in the gun’s engraving than he was the gun. Admiring the scroll work was a precursor to Kit’s fascination with the Arts & Crafts Movement and his love of Art Nouveau design lines.

When the Carsons divorced, 10-year-old Kit and his brothers moved from Champie Ranch to Prescott with their mother. To ease the transition after his parents’ divorce, Kit would retreat to his room and paint model cars and sketch. By the age of 12, Kit knew he wanted to be an artist.

“My mother taught us self-discipline,” Kit says. “If we wore out our jeans, she wouldn’t replace them. She would tell us to get a paper route and buy our own jeans. I had two paper routes delivering in the morning and afternoon. It was 1963 and I was the only Seventh grader with $20 in his pocket.”

Kit’s mother was also creative. Although she worked full-time, she took up weaving as a hobby and made quite a few rugs, some of which Kit sill owns. To this day, the local college manages the Paula Carson Scholarship Fund for Weavers.

Kit’s brothers still live in Prescott. His twin, Steve, uses large earth-moving equipment to coax nature back to its natural setting after man has messed things up. Steve is a cowboy. His other brother Tom is a building contractor, one of the best in Prescott, of course, and his other brother Johnny is a cowboy.

Sculpting

For his sculpture, Kit uses found objects, mostly rusted metal parts of all descriptions which make up his Library of Visual Solutions. Kit brought 10 tons of his metal “Library” to Prescott and sold about 40 tons before moving from Camp Cactus in New River.

Cortez Camp Library of Visual Solutions at Kit’s new home now under construction

When sculpting metal, he will search through his “library” and select pieces that complement each other, welding them together to create a pleasing composition of angles and geometrics. As an artist who has learned to focus intensely, Kit honed his ability to quickly select and arrange pieces. His eye is trained and his mind revels in moving pieces around and around until he lands on the perfect composition.

Two smaller sculptures pictured below hang in the rental’s living room and illustrate his use of repeated angles or other design motifs.

Before moving from Camp Cactus, Kit constructed a massive metal sculpture that looked like a giant earth-moving machine. It was about 30 feet long, 10 feet wide and 8 feet high. He sold it to one of his collectors. Not all of his sculptures are gigantic, however, and not all are completely metal. They come in all shapes and sizes.

The day of my visit, Kit is monitoring the construction of a rock sculpture, a bench commissioned by a client and constructed from rocks on the client’s land. Kit selected two large stones, one for the base and one to sit atop it as a back, and directed the crew on where to place them. Because big machinery wouldn’t fit on the rocky hilltop, the rock bench crew manually moved two massive rocks with levers, straps and cable.

As we’re photographing his workspace in the rental home, Kit receives a call; the rocks are in place and ready for his review. We jump into my MINI and drive over. “Everything in Prescott is only a 5-minute minute drive away,” Kit says.

We promptly arrive and Kit sits on the bench, posing with the happy men who built the bench using their brute strength and power provided by Red Bull. Kit approves the rock placement.

“I’ll add stones around the bottom,” Kit says, “and place soil, pine needles and sticks to make it look as though the bench has been here a million years.”

We drive back to town for lunch and Kit says, “I’m glad to see those guys so happy about the rock bench. They figured it out as they went along.”

These are the same men who moved the 1914 house off of Kit’s Prescott lot on Cortez Street, clearing the way for him to build his new home, Cortez Camp, which will be much like Camp Cactus back in New River; about 1,300 square feet of artistic touches, including metal pieces here and there, inside and out, and a big shop in the back.

Kit lived at Camp Cactus in New River on the edge of Tonto National Forest for 25 years and when he stood on his front porch looking out, all he saw were mountains and Saguaros, nothing man-made.

“I became a bit too isolated there,” Kit says, part of the reason he decided to sell Camp Cactus and move to Prescott where his three brothers live.

Kit-House — Camp Cactus in New River, Arizona

“Camp Cactus is my largest piece of art yet,” Kit says. Thinking of it as an art piece is the only way Kit could bring himself to sell the home he crafted with his own hands. As with every other piece of art he’s made, Kit signed Camp Cactus by engraving a silver plate with the following words and attaching it to a wall inside the house:

“This home was conceived in my heart, designed in my mind, and built with my hands as a work of art. It remains my masterpiece. Kit Carson.”

“I’ll always miss the house, and the view, but I’ve integrated those memories and only want to remember how good it was,” Kit says.

Cortez Camp is his newest work of art/future living space. Strict building codes in Prescott mean Kit has to hire certified welders to put up his rusted porch poles instead of doing it himself. That’s a bummer for someone who welds all the time. Luckily, Kit’s brother Tom lives next door and is the building contractor for Cortez Camp.

Cortez Camp under construction as seen from Cortez Street

Kit walks through his future bedroom at Cortez Camp

Kit stands in his future workshop; his house is in the background

Tips and Tricks

Making a living at art isn’t just about making art. It requires adapting to customers’ changing tastes and active marketing. Over the years, Kit incorporated a few sensible tactics into his marketing repertoire.

“I was in Neiman’s one day and saw a consultant advising a customer on what colors worked best with her skin and hair. It occurred to me that I needed to know those things so I can advise my clients. And that’s what I do. I make the jewelry about them.”

Kit has attracted a number of serious collectors who buy his jewelry and home decor items. But he can no longer depend on his collectors to show up at art shows and buy enough jewelry to make it worth his while. Lately, he’s hit on a mutually-beneficial arrangement where he visits his collectors in their homes as they host a lunch or breakfast for friends. Kit enjoys spending time with his clients and hearing what works and doesn’t work with his jewelry, and they enjoy having an artist in their home, as a friend.

After 43 years of ups and downs, Kit is still the artist who branches out and takes jobs when offered. He still makes art from his heart, lives below his means and has an uncommon piece-of-mind.

Kit crafts his life like he crafts a well-designed piece of jewelry. And it sparkles.

Video Gallery

Photo Gallery

References

Kit’s jewelry website: https://www.kitcarsonjewelry.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html

Kit’s Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/market/kit_carson_jewelry

For an in-depth look at how Kit created his stone home in New River, be sure to read Candy Moulton’s online article, Camp Cactus: Kit Carson’s artist retreat near Cave Creek, Arizona: https://truewestmagazine.com/cactus-camp/

To hear Kit’s own explanation of the design and building materials/elements used in creating Camp Cactus, watch his Sotheby’s video: https://privateclientgroupagents.com/videos/cactus-camp/

PBS’ Craft in America featuring Kit: http://www.craftinamerica.org/artists/kit-carson/. Kit’s page on the Craft in America website has several videos explaining his work and philosophy.

Rob Cobasky, Sculptor

“Each figure is a character and I can you tell you their story,” Rob says about this army of 18-inch zombie warriors and skeletal cowboys, some with long, hooked noses and gnarled fingers, others with half-skeletal faces, all with a determined look to survive by wielding their “junk-yard” armor and weapons. “They all come from the School of Hard Knocks. Or else I’m purging some deep anger issues,” he laughs.

Gorgeously Grotesque

The first time I lay eyes on Rob, he’s sitting on a bench looking miserable, even though an 8-foot tall perfectly-rendered life-sized and life-like Frankenstein monster stands watch over him. Rob sits in the monster’s shadow by his tented sculpture gallery, which is sandwiched between a silversmith making exquisite contemporary pendants and earrings and a… well, I don’t see who the other artists are or what their pieces look like because once I start examining Rob’s ghoulish figures, I spend the remainder of our visit at Stop Number Five on the Hidden in the Canyon artist-studio tour amongst Rob’s macabre creatures, my mouth hanging open.

If Rob looks temporarily miserable, I think, perhaps he is feeling like a fish out of water, his artwork under-appreciated by the average visitor. Me? My mind is blown and I’m not moving on. I lean in and study each piece, a different character sculpted from Rob’s imagination. My eyes follow the intricate lines of every face, hand and piece of clothing, some of which are actual pieces of fabric. The detail is exquisite even if the features are grotesque.

Rob sculpts the small, one-of-a-kind figures in Chavant clay, and he might paint certain parts of their clothing or armament. He also casts some larger pieces in silicon, like Frankenstein, whose skin looks so real with hints of red and blue veins, pores and hair, that when the sun shines through the stretched web of his hand, it glows like a human’s. Frankenstein has eerie, sparse hair flowing over metal pieces that realistically clamp the top of his head on. Even his large, black coat and pants are worn and frayed in just the right places.

Frankenstein is marvelous, and so is Rob.

While studying the minute details of every work, all I can say is “wow” and “amazing,” yet Rob communicates beautifully about his process. When he talks about sculpting clay or casting silicon or resin, his passion is obvious; his hands dart and his eyes shine.

Not only has Rob perfected, through self-guided learning, the techniques needed to create his sculptures, he did it in his spare time while being a hair stylist the last 30 years. For 18 years, Rob owned his own shop, called Salon Designs. Now, Rob and his wife Anna, a nail artist, share space at a salon near Happy Valley and I-17 north of Phoenix. They like the arrangement. Between customers, Rob can sculpt.

“Having a sculpture at work,” Rob says, “means I can take an entire day to work on one finger!” He’s not joking. The time he spends on the tiniest of details shows up and pays off. He studies bone construction, where muscle meets bones, to craft the second-most important feature of any figure, their hands. The most important feature is, of course, the face. But the eyes Rob crafts are incredible, too. Very real and moist and just-right red.

“I’m Not lazy,” Rob says. Understatement! The amount of work he turns out is impressive, and it’s not all sculpting.

Rob built a large detached garage as his workshop. In the desert summer, when it’s too hot for the workshop, he retreats to a small room off his living room where he sits at a desk, with lots of good lighting, and sculpts, or paints, or attaches real human hair from his salon clients to his creations. The room is lined with shelves holding molds, silicon monster faces pocked with warts, and sculptures in various stages of completion. A torso sits in the center of the room, at child height, and a closet holds even more molds and heads and faces.

Rob demonstrates applying eyebrows to a silicon face. He clamps a sewing needle, point down, into an X-acto knife holder. He has nipped off the tip of the needle at the eye, leaving a u-shape in which he threads a human hair. Inserting the needle at an angle, like eyebrows naturally grow, Rob leaves the hair embedded in the brow and moves on to the next one. When all hairs are in place, he’ll trim them.

At the 2017 Arizona State Fair, Rob entered several pieces and wondered if the general public would understand his work. Well, let’s just say he swept the damn fair! And that’s after they weren’t even sure how to categorize his work. Most of his entries were listed as “Home Arts,” and the show organizer told Rob they will create a unique category for his entries in next year’s State Fair. He won two first place awards, two second place, one third place, one fourth place and a big pink ribbon for “Exceptional Merit.”

But for someone who wasn’t sure where his work belonged, the category was irrelevant. In the end, he was awarded a big purple “Best of Show” ribbon and a big purple “People’s Choice” ribbon. Rob swept the damn fair.

Rob sells his pieces through shows, galleries and retail shops, and he has a client base who buy multiple pieces to decorate their fancy homes, and who even commission work.

Rob should be a make-up artist on The Walking Dead. In fact, he was selected to work as master sculptor on an independent short horror film called The Kiss, written and directed by Remi Vaughn. Rob’s sculptures will be used as art produced by one of the main characters in this horror/psychological thriller starring Caterina Murino and Sean Patrick Flanery. The project has been stalled by budget and distribution issues, and Vaughn is re-assessing the format of telling the story. Stay up-to-date on the film by visiting www.thekiss-movie.com.

Rob also worked on Sweet, a short horror film shot in Mesa, Arizona, in 2014, about vampire cowboys based on Stephen King’s Skinner Sweet short story. Rob made the hands and face for the lead character and he also played a couple of parts. Check it out on Youtube to see his low-tech solution for having a bloody human heart beat in Sweet’s hand.

On Rob’s To-Do List is making fully-functioning hands using 3-D printed bones on which he sculpts organic-looking details. He’ll do it. Rob ultimately completes his projects, which are many. A giant T-rex head, molded from paper, masking tape and a bed sheet, rests in his workshop, waiting for final finessing. Half-completed sculptures sit here and there.

“There’s a freedom to living the dream,” Rob says, “and being able to jump from project to project.” His mood leads the way. In addition to being a great artist and a talented actor, he also has rhythm.

In his younger days, Rob was a drummer, playing in several bands, such as The Bashers and Right Side Up, rehearsing four nights a week for four hours. When his band was interviewed on TV, he was asked what he wanted to do with his career. Rob’s answer was, “Be a pilot.” He laughs remembering his answer then, which had nothing to do with music and playing in a band.

Sometimes late at night, when he’s concentrating on his art, Rob will crank up his favorite groups; Type O negative, Primed, Ozzy Osbourne or Rush.

But, Rob is as obsessed with aviation as he is with monsters and his dream to be a pilot came true. Currently, he’s building from scratch a Hummel Bird aircraft designed by Morry Hummel (of Hummel Aviation of Byran, Ohio).

Rob is crafting each piece by hand (except for the wing ribs). Otherwise, he fabricates the aluminum pieces and other parts according to detailed sketches on 40 pages of plans provided by Hummel Aviation.

“I’m cutting two cylinders off a Volkswagen engine,” Rob says. “It will be a two-cylinder, four-stroke half-VW aircraft engine, weighing about 84 pounds and ramping up to 47 horsepower.”

Rob talks about crafting a monster to sit atop his Hummel Bird airplane and then entering the plane/monster “sculpture” in next year’s Arizona State Fair. Get ready for another sweep!

One man’s daunting task is another man’s pure joy.

While flying recently, Rob had to make an emergency landing on the east side of Lake Pleasant in his Error Bike plane (which he bought already put together). The engine in the yellow and white plane ate a piston, stranding Rob at the lake. Anna came to the rescue with Rob’s hand-made boat, in which they promptly scooted across the lake to his stranded plane. He put the yellow and white plane on his wooden boat, carried it back across the lake and on to home for repair.

He’s usually quite proficient at flying. In 1999, Rob took first place at the Arizona State Aerobatic Championship.

When he’s flying, Rob will spot coyotes or interesting items he might want to pick up when he’s back on the ground. One find was an antique french door which Anna converted to a tabletop, refinished to match the table base and topped off with a thick sheet of glass. Very shabby chic.

But let’s get back to that hand-made wooden boat. Rob has made three boats in the last couple of years. The first one is a shorter version, something of a prototype with which he could experiment. When that boat turned out well, he built a larger one out of plywood.

Unfortunately, returning home from Lake Pleasant after taking the boat on its inaugural run, Rob’s truck attracted a burro like a red cape attracts a bull in Spain. Burros that live around the lake and are protected by Arizona Game and Fish are known for being testy, and vocal. They can create issues for recreation seekers like Rob. This particular male charged Rob’s truck, ran into the side of it and ended up under the boat trailer, wrecking everything and demolishing his new boat.

Shaken but not deterred, Rob built a second boat out of plywood from Home Depot. He spent $250 on supplies and proudly says, “it catches fish like a $65,000 bass boat.”

Rob grew up in Phoenix in the 1970s, riding his bike to the end of his paved road where desert started. “As a kid,” Rob says, “I loved looking at monsters in magazines, comic books and the movies.” He began sketching and sculpting in his teens.

As a senior in high school, Rob recalls a cowboy showing interest in his paper mache sculptures. One was of a Native American man wearing a necklace of real coyote teeth. The man wanted to take three of Rob’s pieces to the Art Institute of Chicago, to be considered for a show. “I met him in the parking lot where I would later own a hair salon,” Rob says. “I remember putting the sculptures on the hood of my truck for the man to inspect. He left with those sculptures and I never saw the sculptures or heard from him again.”

Rob sculpted this creature from paper mache when he was in high school.

Older and wiser, Rob and Anna, his wife of 16 years, now live in Black Canyon City, about 25 miles north of Phoenix, with their cute little dogs, Addie and Lacey, and two gorgeous feral cats who appeared in their backyard as kittens and decided to stay (the food Rob and Anna leave for the cats is a good enticement).

Being practical, Rob plans to keep his day job. “I won’t kick that bee hive,” he says. Cutting hair provides a stable foundation from which he can stretch his artistry in new directions and even in new places.

“For me,” Rob says, “the creative process is like throwing dice down on a table. Each throw comes up with a different result, and following one dice often takes me off in a new direction.” Rob’s fingers scurry across the coffee table as he speaks, showing the adventure of going down the rabbit hole of creativity.

Rob’s is a talent and an energy that can’t be contained. No limitations.

YouTube University continues to be Rob’s source for everything he wants to learn and do. When it comes to his sculptures, big and small, he’s adamant that “it has to be horror.”

Three years ago, Rob and Anna trekked to Monsterpalooza in Burbank, California, to check it out and see if he might want to participate in subsequent years. But they couldn’t even get in! After only 40 minutes of being there, they returned to Arizona. Rob doesn’t worry about being in with the art world or even cognizant of artists considered master monster crafters. He’s on his own path, following his own aesthetic, exploring and learning new techniques and new mediums. It’s simply what he does with his endless energy.

At the Phoenix Comicon this year, a long line of young and old people waited to have Rob apply bloody flesh wounds to their faces, hands, knees and elbows. Rob donated The Terminavigator, a large torso piece, to be raffled off to benefit a local no-kill animal shelter. A lucky female scientist from California was delighted to win the sculpture.

Rob recently joined a Facebook group for people who work on horror movies. He’s making connections and expects to travel to Hollywood soon to meet folks face-to-face, laying the groundwork for being considered for future projects.

“I’m transparent about my skills,” Rob says about getting exposure for himself and his work. “I’m opening myself up – heart, mind and soul – to other people, laying bare my abilities and dreams.”

I’m using words like ghoulish, macabre and grotesque to describe Rob’s figures. Yet, they elicit compassion rather than disgust. Their faces reveal them as victims, not the bad guys. They’re pulling together their broken spirits and their broken bodies and riding on, or stumbling on, their dignity intact. They may look like monsters, but Rob has embedded a humanity in each, and given each their own story, their own struggles. They won’t quit, and neither will Rob.

He has the usual self-doubt of any artist and sometimes he’ll ask himself the usual questions; Why am I doing this? Does anyone really care? Do people understand my work?

“I do it because I want to,” Rob says. Let’s hope he’ll always wants to.

Gives the rest of us something to live for.

GALLERY

References

Sweet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySZWBVGnITs

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robcobasky/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtStudio918/ & https://www.facebook.com/josephrob.cobasky?fref=search

Rob pilots a Quicksilver Sport 2S over the mountainour Sonoran Desert, trailing Rich Parker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9DyZHdmms

Introducing Rob Cobasky, sculptor on The Kiss movie

https://vimeo.com/110074290

Jeff Carol Davenport, Sculptor

One of Jeff’s earliest impulses to sculpt happened at Riazzi’s Italian Garden restaurant in Mesa, Arizona, circa 1964, when she was six years old.

Sculptress-in-Demand

One of Jeff’s earliest impulses to sculpt happened at Riazzi’s Italian Garden restaurant in Mesa, Arizona, circa 1964, when she was six years old.

“Our table had white candles,” Jeff said, “and I remember using my thumbnails to press the warm wax into shapes. Every time we ate there, I looked forward to playing with the wax. I always loved playing in the mud, too, because I could squeeze forms from the muck.” Sadly, Riazzi’s closed in August 2017 after 72 years in business, but Jeff continues to sculpt professionally and for fun.

JeffDavenport_OverTheRainbow — “Over the Rainbow”

Growing up, Jeff stayed outdoors as much as possible, and claims to have been a Tom boy. “I was the perfect son for my father,” she laughs. Her father, Wade Hoffman, hailed from Gastonia, North Carolina. He’s the reason she has a masculine name. “I think he really, really wanted a son after they had my older sister, Patricia,” Jeff said. “And sometimes he says he named me after the actor Jeff Chandler. Then why didn’t he name me ‘Chandler?'” she laughs.

Wade started his career in the U.S. Secret service. Eventually, he was sent to Japan where he met Shizuko, a big-city girl brought up on the Ginza strip in Tokyo, what Manhattan is to NYC, with all the big-city accoutrements, including a fine education and an impeccable fashion sense.

When they married in the late 50s, Wade could no longer be in the secret service, so he brought Shizuko and Patricia to Rock Hill, South Carolina, where Jeff was born in 1958. Three years later, Shizuoka could no longer stand the injustice of a segregated south and insisted they move. After traveling throughout the U.S., Wade and Shizuko chose Phoenix to make a home for their family.

Jeff has spirit. She’s gentle and energetic, witty and considerate, and always creating something with her hands.

Jeff’s latest creation made the newspaper! She sculpted a life-size bronze statue of Pat Tillman posted at ASU’s Sun Devil stadium near the entrance of Tillman Tunnel. Arthur Pearce II provided funds for the statue and commissioned Jeff to do the piece.

TillmanUveiling — Left: Jeff & Art Pearce at the Pat Tillman statue reveal, ASU Sun Devil Stadium, August ’17.

Tillman is remembered as a former Arizona Cardinals and ASU football player who enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, and who, as an Army Ranger, was tragically killed in Afghanistan in 2004 by friendly fire.

JeffTillmanModel — Jeff sculpting the Pat Tillman maquette, or model.

Jeff sculpted the 16-inch maquette, or model, in clay from a photo of Pat with his long hair flowing and his ASU helmet in his hand. Officials at ASU however, asked to have Pat’s likeness crafted from photo of him wearing a helmet. She revised the model and re-submitted it to ASU.

In progress: Jeff’s maquette of Pat Tillman.

They approved the revised maquette and Jeff proceeded to work with local foundry Bollinger Atelier to digitize the model into a 3-D image, which was then enlarged to 1.1 times life size and cut out of foam to form the core of the statue. The foundry layered the foam with clay between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thickness all over.

Jeff later crafted the letters “ARIZONA” AND “TILLMAN” and laid them on the life-size clay sculpture. When she made the 16-inch maquette, it was too small to place raised lettering on the jersey.

The 6-foot, 400-pound statue was revealed in a dedication ceremony on Wednesday, August 30, 2017, and Jeff, her mother and husband Mike attended as special guests. With the statue’s unveiling, ASU’s new pre-game ritual involves players touching the statue as they run onto the field.

Jeff with the clay-covered core sculpture after the mold was made.

The entire process of producing the statue was emotional for Jeff, who, as an ASU graduate, followed Pat’s career and story.

How did a young Amer-Asian woman become a bronze sculptor?

After studying fine arts at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Jeff worked as a metal chaser at Beyond Bronze Foundry in Colorado, where she welded parts together, ground down metal to clean seams and other surface imperfections to make just-poured pieces look like one complete piece.

Back in Tempe, though, her parents had opened a Japanese restaurant and asked Jeff to come help out, which she did. Next, she began her 25-year stint at Arizona Bronze (now Bollinger Atelier), a foundry in Tempe, Arizona, where she worked as a metal chaser, then switched to wax works when the pneumatic tools caused her hands to hurt. Jeff used dental tools to take down wax seams and design the gating system that feeds the bronze into a mold. She also learned the art of mold making.

Miscellaneous pieces Jeff crafts as demos at school for her students.

“I love making molds!” Jeff said. “You must be methodical and plan everything out. It’s an engineering feat in mixing the rubber, brushing it on and them pulling the rubber as it sets.”

The one thing Jeff has never done at either foundry was pour the bronze. She also did not work on patinas for foundry clients, however, she occasionally adds patinas to her own works.

“To add a red patina to Pat Tillman’s ASU jersey, and a hint of gold to his pants,” Jeff said, “I brought in Aiya Jordan from San Francisco. Aiya is also an ASU grad and one of the best patina artists I know.”

Aiya Jordan adding patina

Preparing the surface for patina

There are at least 12 steps to producing a bronze sculpture and Jeff became intimate with them all during those 25 years. Here’s a five-minute video of a “How It’s Made” episode showing the lost-wax casting technique.

“I did the fine detail work on projects,” Jeff said. “If a piece required detailed precision, I’d have the stamina and small motor skills to make it right.”

Jeff with Zebulon Pearce statue in Mesa, Arizona.

Having Art Pearce as a client means Jeff went from being a long-time employee of the foundry to being their valued customer. Before Pearce commissioned the Tillman statue from Jeff, he had asked her to create a bronze statue of his grandfather, Zebulon Pearce, a former Mesa mayor who owned the local Feed & Grain store on Main Street located at 155 W. Main Street. Zeb Pearce is also known for bringing Coors beer to the valley.

Like most folks, Jeff’s life hasn’t been all work. She married, had two sons Jeff and Cori, divorced and then married Mike, a retired NAU police officer, 21 years ago. Mike also has adult children; Michael, Lisa and Kyla.

During her annual performance review 11 years ago, the foundry owner told Jeff her salary had topped out; if she wanted more money, she needed to work elsewhere.

“Like many people who hit a dead-end in their job,” Jeff said, “I considered going back to school to learn new skills.”

A Friend suggested Jeff teach art; the pay is okay and benefits are really good, especially having summers off! Jeff applied to an education program offered by the Deer Valley Unified school district and Arizona State University. Having a bachelors degree was a pre-requisite. Of the 22 students accepted into the program, Jeff was one of 11 who made it all the way through.

She started teaching 10 years ago, initially instructing 4th graders. Four years ago, she went to Sandra Day O’Connor High school to teach art and ceramics.

“I enjoy building relationships with the kids, and I learn so much from them, Jeff said.”

Jeff challenges herself to make something every day. In class, as the kids work on their sculptures, Jeff molds earthenware clay into small animals or abstracts.

“Sometimes, the little thing I’m sculpting becomes the inspiration for a statue, like the boy playing soccer, called ‘Over the Rainbow.'”

“Learning Together” won first place in the Prescott Valley art show and now sits in public spaces of Prescott Valley, Mesa, and Oro Valley. Jeff has other public sculptures, including the “K9 Police Memorial” at Wesley Bolin Plaza in Phoenix and Vancouver, Canada, “Charlie” at Wickenburg Ranch, and the “Scottsdale Police Memorial.”

Boy’s head from “Over the Rainbow” sculpture, plus forms for making animals.

“Learning Together” won the people’s choice award and features a boy with a ball and a dog ready to fetch. Jeff has a knack for making her subjects appear weightless and buoyant, even though they’re cast in bronze. And her style touches hearts, as evidenced by the connection between the boy and his dog while playing catch.

Charlie was Merv Griffin’s dog, and Merv donated the land in Wickenburg that became the Dog Park where Charlie watches over the visitors.

“When my students see my sculptures in a public place,” says Jeff, “they come up to me with eyes wide, asking for my autograph, and I remind them I’m still the teacher they’ve always known. I’m me.”

Even on the days when Jeff sculpts at work, she still arrives home and sculpts or paints. Usually, she works in her detached art studio, which she and Mike built in 2016. Their house in New River sits on a hill and their backyard looks out toward hills and into a valley.

“I look around and am amazed at how much I’ve produced,” Jeff said. “I was in a local gallery one day and admired a little bronze piece, an alligator bag on the back of a horse sculpture, and I said, ‘how would they do that?’ The gallery owner said, ‘Don’t you remember, you made that?’”

Jeff laughs at having made so many tiny bronze items and not being able to remember them all. If an artist needed a small item for their sculpture, they would ask her if she would create it. She’s made everything from that small alligator bag for a horse, to guns, holsters, rabbits, cats, and even a cowboy riding an armadillo. The last item was for an artist from Texas.

Musical instruments called ocarinas made by Jeff.

When Jeff’s students complain about not being creative, she asks them if, when they play video games, do they go through all levels the first day. “Of course not,” Jeff said, “the more you play, the better you get. It’s the same with sculpting, or anything you do. I’ve been sculpting for 40 years, which is why my students think it looks easy.”

Her advice for anyone who wants to make a living doing the creative work they love is to “keep with it. That’s what I was told by my professor. The artists who make it are the ones who don’t quit. Work, work, work. You get a little bit better each time.”