Featured Artist Joseph Boddy

Artist Joseph Boddy gives new life to farm equipment and tools by integrating them into sculptural works. Visit his website to see more of his portfolio.

 

 

The very first time I felt a passion for art was while running a piece of chalk across a giant board of slate that my father had screwed to the wall of our kitchen. The one-room school house he had attended was being demolished, and he had brought home the slate board, along with several other pieces.

 

 

My father, like me, loved to repurpose materials even though the term “repurpose” was not much in use back then.

 

 

Much of my youth meant fishing and hunting up Sourdough Creek in the Gallatin Valley of Montana, where I gained an appreciation of old rusty farm equipment, frosty landscapes, weeds, and endless wildlife. All of these observations are now a huge part of my most recent work.

 

 

At the age of ten I responded to a “draw this” challenge on the back of a match book cover. A representative of the famous artist school that ran this challenge came to our living room. He explained to my parents how “big city” magazine illustrators were in hot demand.

 

 

The “big city” did not appeal to a reclusive, introverted kid who loved spending weeks alone with his dog in the Spanish Peaks and swimming in the Fire Hole River north of Yellowstone Park. However, it did convince me art would be the focus of my life, regardless of where and what I created it to be.

 

 

While studying fine art, I met my life partner. She was also passionately engaged in art and we fell headlong into a life as full-time artists.

 

 

After ten years as a professional graphic designer, agency art director and the addition of three children to our number, Marlys and I decided that I was ready to leave my day job as an employed artist to start my life as a full-time freelance illustrator and she a full-time ceramic artist.

 

 

Our work evolved and our business grew. My illustrations appeared in over seventy publications for many major publishing houses across the country.

 

 

As an illustrator, I specialized in children’s publications. It followed naturally that the subjects of my first sculpture were whimsical animals. I still love doing these sculptures and they are primarily sold at the Vickers Collection in Vail Colorado.

 

 

I feel strongly about honoring the past by reintroducing reclaimed wood from old buildings, rusty farm equipment and other natural materials in a way that hopefully helps redefine what beauty has always been.

 

 

I’ve come full circle in my art life back to the time when as a child I stood in the middle of a creek and watched as the reflections in the water gave me a new way to see a red willow bush, or wonder what a rusty scrap on the edge of a wheat field had once been. These are things that take a lifetime to finally be expressed in art, and I feel privileged to have had those experiences which drive my esthetic senses today.

 

Artist Joseph Boddy invites you to visit his other website which features his animal sculptures, and to follow him on Facebook and LinkedIn.

 

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