Raw metal forged into Organic Dimensional Sculptures
" As an artist my goal is to reproduce nature in its glory, rendering an illusion of reality..."
Stu Ager attended the University of North Texas obtaining a BS in Electrical Engineering and has worked in Mobile Communications for over 25 years. Drawn to art from an early age, he always envisioned himself working as an artist though he never had any formal training.
Creating Art has always been a passion from custom auto body/paint work to Stained Glass, Mixed Media, and NW Native Art. Never satisfied with traditional methods he has always looked to find new ways of creating art. Experimenting with different materials and processes, he discovered a passion working with metal.
The inspiration for his current work came to him while in the garden marveling at a most incredible flowering vine. This led to years of trial and error before perfecting his process of recreating this vision into a 3 dimensional metal work replica. Since then he has been producing garden sculptures, flowing flowering branches, and lattice climbing vines which appear to be alive.
These designs are created with various combinations of Aluminum, Copper, Steel, Cedar, Acrylic paints, and Patinas. The metal being fashioned with areas of high and low Relief, similar to Repoussé, creating a sense of reality. Leaves and Flowers are cut from thin sheet metal, sanded, welded, primed, Airbrushed and finished with multiple clear coats. Branches and Vines are Copper/Copper Cladded Steel, finished with Patinas and clear coats. Lattices are fashioned from Cedar.
The work stands out due to the unique metal fabrication process he uses. Whereas other Metal Art is typically created with heavier gauge metal and no Relief, he uses very thin metal which lends itself to the realism he is trying to obtain. This makes the work somewhat difficult to produce, as the flowers and leaves must be made from material thin enough to look real, but substantial enough to stand the test of time. He has since perfected a method of structural fabrication and welding of thin metal to produce these metal sculptures. The thin gauge and contour that is worked into the metal producing a high level of realism. After finishing the sculptures with Acrylic paints and patinas the result is a striking organic appearance.
He currently resides in SW Washington near the gateway to the Columbia River Gorge.
Drawn to the area in the early nineties for the Epic Windsurfing found in “The Gorge”, he
continues to find inspiration from living in the abundant natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest.