FEBRUARY 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS
Inside Loveland’s Sculpture Scene with Outsider Benny Parkes
By David Boerner
enjamin Parkes lives in Loveland and is working on two six-feet tall, bronze sculptures. He rents a house near the historic downtown district where he has a garage, clay, drawings, and tools. But other than that, Parkes is about as unlikely of a Loveland sculpture tour guide as I could find.
A Denver native, Parkes moved to L.A. at 20 to go to USC’s film school and get into the Hollywood film industry. Now 30, Parkes has gotten a lot done in L.A.
He’s been a video editor. He’s been involved with performance troupes. He’s built installations for desert festivals like Burning man. He’s a musician. He’s a conceptual artist. He’s been poor. And he’s gotten breaks.
Through Parkes’ renaissance-man film/art/idea/performance work, he met screenwriter Terry Rossio. Rossio, who has penned such blockbuster movies as Aladdin, Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean, was looking for a sculptor to make six-foot-tall sculptures of the tortoise and the hare to flank the driveway of his Hollywood estate. Parkes put in a bid and Rossio approved, commissioning him to make them.
Parkes had done many things in his life, but he’d never made a bronze sculpture. He needed help. So he went to Loveland, Colorado.
Wait. Loveland?
Yes. Loveland.
“I knew that Loveland is where you go to find the leading names in Bronze, so I brought the gig home,” Parkes said, moving back to Colorado for the first time since high school.
Loveland is well-known for bronze. In fact, it’s a world-renowned sculpture Mecca. Loveland is home to the expansive Benson Sculpture Park, which houses more than 100 sculptures. Every summer, Benson hosts Sculpture in the Park, the world’s largest sculpture show. Loveland is home to several foundries, including Art Castings of Colorado, the largest in Northern Colorado. And, most importantly, Loveland is the home to a community of professional sculptors who are making a living doing what they love.
Parkes had a family friend in Loveland who was a sculptor: George Lundeen. In fact, Lundeen is probably the most notable sculptor in Loveland. So Parkes flew out to ask if Lundeen could help him navigate the process of turning a foot-tall clay model into a six-foot-tall bronze sculpture, and Lundeen agreed.
George Lundeen is one of the few sculptors in Loveland who watched Loveland’s transformation from what he calls “just a sleepy retirement community” to a bronze Mecca. When I went to Lundeen’s studio, he was working on a twelve-foot tall sculpture of a mountain biker commissioned by mega-sporting goods store Scheels in Reno, Nevada.
“It all started with Bob Zimmerman,” Lundeen started, cutting helmet straps into a giant, not-yet-attached cyclist’s head. Zimmerman was a metallurgist educated at the Colorado School of Mines who had worked a career casting auto parts for General Motors. Zimmerman quit GM and moved to Loveland in 1968 to raise his family away from Detroit. He needed to make a living, so he did what he knew best, opening a metals foundry to cast tools, parts, whatever people needed. At his foundry, Zimmerman started casting artists’ sculptures in bronze.
immerman’s foundry went bankrupt, but the bank neglected to take Zimmerman’s keys or shut off the electricity. Since Zimmerman still had agreements to cast several sculptor’s bronzes, he decided he would cast them in spite of the bankruptcy, working at night after the banks had closed. Zimmerman realized that the artists sculpture business was so lucrative during this period that he decided to go to the bank with the money he had made and beg them to give him the foundry back. And instead of having Zimmerman arrested, the bank remarkably agreed to take his money and let him return to work, this time fully devoted to casting sculptures and calling his foundry Art Castings of Colorado.
In 1976, George Lundeen, on summer break from teaching at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, went to visit friends in Loveland. He needed a piece he was working on sandblasted and was recommended to Zimmerman’s foundry. Lundeen was given permission to use the sandblaster and by the time he left Art Castings, he’d realized that Zimmerman was doing the best bronze casting that he had ever seen. Lundeen asked Zimmerman for a job and called the University of Nebraska to tell them that he would not be renewing his teaching contract. Loveland was the place to make sculptures. And Lundeen has worked here ever since.
“The foundry was why Loveland became such a sculpture community,” Lundeen said. “If the foundries would close up, the artists wouldn’t stay here.”
Art Castings, although no longer owned by George Zimmerman, is still in business and is undoubtedly the biggest foundry in Northern Colorado. Their facility is top-notch and Artist Services Coordinator Jeanne Toussaint is happy to give rookie sculptors or anyone interested a tour of the facility. Ask to see the “Knock Out Room” where the just-cast bronze is broken out of its mold by a guy with a mask and a hammer.
The first step to getting a clay or wood sculpture cast in bronze is a trip to the mold makers, and Loveland has one of the most creative mold makers around: Custom Casting, owned and operated by 26-year-old Brian Dreith and two of his friends. Custom Casting does so much more that just mold making for sculptors on their way to the foundry. If you’re interested in seeing eerily life-like infant dolls or wonder what a $1,000 bucket of bronze powder looks like, stop by their shop.
It’s the infrastructure that makes Loveland such a great town for sculpture and such a great town for sculptors. It started with Bob Zimmerman and Art Castings of Colorado and continued with George Lundeen and other sculptors. The story of Loveland’s sculpture boom is populated by metal chasers, mold makers, wax casters, sculptors, and the guy with the hammer in the knockout room. And Benjamin Parkes is the newest chapter in Loveland’s sculpture history, forging another piece of Loveland’s bronze legacy.
The Benson Sculpture Park is located across from Loveland High at 29th & Beech. It is free and open to the public.
Art Castings of Colorado: 511 8th St. SE. 970-667-1114
Custom Casting: 1000 S. Lincoln Ave. Suite 123. 970-461-8107
George Lundeen’s Studio: 338 E 4th St. 970-669-7176