Here's Something Cool: Verny's Animals

         Here’s another amazing sculptor making amazing art out of spare parts.  Igor Verny creates creatures that are often articulated and moveable, with meticulous, masterful construction.  Unlike some of the other cool recycling sculptors I’ve featured before (such as Jeremy Mayer, Matt Wilson, Xu Bing, and Julie Alice Chappell, for example), I can’t always 

identify the parts that go into Verny’s pieces.  They’re so smoothly incorporated that they look like they were made for the parts instead of originally being made for some other purpose.  They are somewhat more like the work of Edouard Martinet, but even more “disguised.”  Somehow all these disparate pieces come together into a smooth, perfect whole.

        I don’t know much about Verny, nor do I have much to say about his artwork, except, of course, “This is so cool!”  After all, that’s the point of the “Here’s Something Cool” feature on this blog.  So I’m just sharing something I ran into on the internet and loved.  It’s worth mentioning the value of reusing items that are probably classified as trash, and how this fits in with a steampunk-adjacent aesthetic.  The wasp, in particular, has a steampunk vibe with the gold decorative elements giving it a Victorian flavor.  The adorable little robots, on the other hand, might fall under some sort of atomic“punk” category, with their mid-century futuristic optimism.

        Verny has posted several photos and short videos of work in progress, but they do little to sate my curiosity.  What are these bits and pieces he’s using?  Where does he get them?  How much does he manipulate them, as opposed to leaving them as they came?  On the dragonfly’s wings and the fish’s fins, for example, did he cut the shapes from sheet metal, or did he find some pieces that were just that shape?  What about adding the veining?  But whatever the method, I love these sculptures.  Not only would I love to own one (or more) myself, but these fill me with inspiration for things I will never be able to make.  If only I could wave a magic wand and have, just for a while, a fully-outfitted metal-working shop, and the materials and skills to play in it!

[Pictures: Goldfish, sculpture by Igor Verny, 2014;

Duck, sculpture by Verny, 2013;

Little robots, sculptures by Verny, 2019;

Dragonfly, sculpture by Verny, 2018;

Wasp, sculpture by Verny, 2015 (All images from Igor Verny on Facebook).]