Metal Magic
A fairy tale carriage, a fire-breathing rhino, a frozen phoenix. These are among the inhabitants of Sisters artist Ken Scott’s imagination. Inhabitants, rather than creations, because they appear when he shows up for them, like lovers in a misty, moonlit meadow.
“Everything I do is all wrapped up in the fact that metal has turned out to be my mistress really,” Scott says. “I don’t seem to be able to put anything else in first place.”
And it’s that love—both for the process and the people it brings into his life—that keeps him making art. At the moment, he has seven works in progress, each so large it will have to live in the yard with his most grandiose sculptures.
“I sell art to make art,” he explains. “Everything I make goes back into it.”
But he’s not just generating financial income. Scott says his exchanges with gallery visitors are rewarding in ways that have nothing to do with money.
“People who come into the gallery, they come in to be blessed, and they do get blessed,” he says. “They’re being blessed and I am too, I get to see it fresh through their eyes and it’s amazing.”
Scott says that art allows people to connect in a different, closer way.
“We are all individual entities and we are all closed systems,” he prefaces, but, “I can touch your heart through my art.”
And while his metal sculptures convey magic, myth, and whimsy, Scott’s attraction to the medium is less gentle.
“Metal suits my temperament perfectly. I don’t have to wait for it to dry, it’s aggressive,” he explains. “The miracle about my love of the art itself is that when it comes out, it’s not shocking, it has a beautiful flow to it.”
Scott’s unique metal art can be seen at the Imagination Gallery, 222 W. Hood Ave., Sisters, and online at kenscottsimagination.com.
This article appears in May 13-20, 2015.
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