“I make my sculpture by welding many small pieces of stainless steel rod to each other. By the time I am finished, the entire surface is covered with welded metal and you no longer can see any of the rods. That overall welding is what gives the sculpture its articulated surface.
You might wonder why, if the sculpture is made of stainless steel, it is not bright and shiny like your refrigerator, or your fork and spoon. That is because, when the metal is welded, it gets red hot. As it cools, the oxygen in the air forms metal oxides on the surface of the metal. These oxides are very hard and they are what makes the surface dark. I like that surface, so I leave it rather than grinding off these oxides to expose the shiny metal underneath. Also, I hate grinding.
My sculptures are abstract, organic forms, designed to stand as a figure stands, in a landscape. The larger pieces seem to require the secure, quiet, human scale of a garden, where they can be viewed close up, over time, surrounded by plants and trees with all the attendant wild life of birds and insects. Looking back, I think every sculpture I ever made was either imagined standing in a garden or was itself a small garden.” – Richard Baronio
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