Wisconsin Life | Metal Artist

For many, finding inspiration can be a bit of a puzzle. My past job, when I was at work, I was thinking about what I wanted to do, but when I got home, I didn't have enough energy to be inspired. And so now, I wake up with energy every day, and I get to go put it to use immediately. But if you look long and hard enough... And I'll dump pieces out all over the floor. Things start fitting into place. There's a lot of times it just doesn't fit, and you'll take a piece, and then you'll find where it fits. And I'll get pieces here and there, and then I kind of fill it in, in the middle. It's that puzzle-solving mentality that artist David Grunges uses to spark his creations. I mainly do wildlife art. I like pieces that have neat curves and shapes and organic feel to them. He's created hundreds upon hundreds of metal sculptures. Every piece wields its own special bond, making it difficult to pick a favorite. Gosh, you know, every time I make one, a lot of times I make one, I say it's my favorite, but then I make another one, and then the next one's my favorite. Although David struggles to pick a favorite, he does prefer sculpting one subject over others. I like doing insects, and so I'll see a really cool insect or a bee. Sometimes it's just based on things my kids have seen, and sometimes it's just, I don't know where it comes from, you know. And I love making spiders. And I knew that I needed something that was going to be different from anything I've ever done before. So I remember the movie The Wild Wild West, and there was this big steampunk monster spider thing they were riding around in, and so I wanted to make something that kind of reminded me of that. And that's where that came from. David prides himself on using materials that normally would either rust away or live forever in a scrap pile. Everything I use is, for the most part, cast iron, mild steel, or stainless steel. And I try to use as much recycled or reclaimed material as possible. So I'd say about 90 to 95 percent of my materials is waste product from some either old pieces of equipment, old car parts, tractor parts, or industrial waste from factories. I've got a horse that I named Oliver because there's a great big hunk of iron on it that's part of an Oliver plow that's probably over 100 years old. And it's just really cool to have the history behind it. I love the fact that I can take material that would just get thrown in the garbage or rot away in a field. You know, some of it gets recycled, but I can take it and give it new life. With most puzzles, you don't see the full picture until everything is pieced together. David, however, likes to leave a few pieces missing, giving others the opportunity to complete the puzzle themselves. I like to take things where your mind has to kind of put the rest of it together. Taking pieces that have a texture that could look like a feather or look like fur, or maybe making a sculpture that has a lot of negative space where half the sculpture you're looking through to the background and the rest of it is material, and letting your mind kind of fill in the pieces. If life is a puzzle, for David, art is a large piece of his. He needed some help solving it at first, but once he did, everything else just seemed to, well, fit. When I decided I was going to do this, I had a lot of positive encouragement from my friends and family. The biggest obstacle that I had to overcome was holding myself back. My life was great, but I know I'd be missing something. You know, what I've gained, the things I'm learning, it allows me to think outside the box a lot. I think that constant activity of thinking and things like that helps me. Everyone along the way really encouraged me to do what I wanted to do, and I'm very grateful for that.