WITHOUT TRIAL, THERE IS NO GROWTH. THERE IS NO BALANCE.
The symbol I love the most about this sculpture is without the heavy weights he holds in his hands, he would be out of balance - they are the very object making him balance. Similar to life: without our trials and struggles, we would not be balanced and would have no growth.
I continue to improve my skills and abilities with sculpting the human form accurately in stainless steel. I have studied many hours of human anatomy to improve my abilities.
HOW IT WAS MADE
This sculpture was built starting with nothing but bare stainless steel barstock. Using my TIG welder, I slowly added weld on top of weld and placing metal where muscle and flesh should be. Sculpting this figure out of steel was a challenge on its own. The dumbbells he holds in his hands are cnc machined from stainless steel. The plates were also designed and specked-out by myself. I stack the weights on the dumbbell to achieve proper balance taking into account proper aesthetics of the dumbbells as well. The weights even spin as they are naturally connected to the bar like a real dumbbell. There is only one small tack-weld holding the end plate and the rest in place.
Getting it to balance properly while still retaining his look was another hurdle! I spent many hours cutting, welding and re-cutting his arms away from his body in order to get it to balance correctly. Hours of trial and error were spent to get the balance just right. You can pick up the sculpture and balance it on anything. It is meant to balance on the small polished tip on top of the polished base so that it can spin and bob silently.
