Bio

Leaving Egypt, Steve and Karen relocated to Kentucky where he set up shop in a borrowed space, then later in his garage, working evenings with his acetylene welder and found materials while keeping a day job. These early twelve-to-fifteen-inch tall pieces, weighing twenty-five to thirty pounds, Shields sculpted using mostly coat hangers that friends donated and crating bands from area warehouses. When pressed, he even used bed springs to fabricate his small pieces—a dog with three legs, two men sitting on a park bench playing checkers, a doctor with his stethoscope. In just a few years, he had created more than one-hundred-seventy-five steel figures.

As Shields’ skills and reputation flourished, he found the small steel pieces limiting. He wanted to include more detail, which could be achieved only in larger works. He determined that found steel was difficult to work with because of its high melting temperature and rigidity. Additionally, steel was impractical for outdoor pieces; it rusted. Several years before his first life-sized outdoor sculpture was commissioned, Shields realized he would need the flexibility of working in a different material.

His exploration led him to copper. Softer and more pliable, it was weather resistant and allowed for more variation in its patina. Crating bands were replaced with searching for copper piping, and scrap copper wire replaced coat hangers. Shields cut the copper piping into strips and used the torched copper wire as if it were brushes, blending the melted metal patchwork into a seamless, textured surface. “You get (melted copper) to a syrupy viscosity, and then you can really paint on it,” he explained. “I knew that if I could work with copper it would give me a whole new arena.”

The problem was getting enough heat on the copper to weld it. Copper dissipated heat so quickly the he could not use the gas torch he applied to steel.”I got the biggest torch tip I could find and suddenly had enough heat.” This technical and creative breakthrough in 1984 allowed him to transition fully from steel to copper. Once he mastered the properties of copper, he as ready to create outdoor art. “It was like finding the missing piece to a puzzle,” he said.

Usually beginning with the figure’s feet, the strips of copper were bent into shape. Adding more copper strips, Shields worked with the welder in one hand and a hammer or pliers in the other, spot welding to previous straps until a roughed in body part emerged, clearly identifiable as a hand or a foot. At this point, the strips resembled a patchwork quilt. To conceal the straps, copper wire was then melted a fraction of an inch at a time covering the entire surface which, giving the work an integrated texture and eliminating any evidence of individual strips. The result was an abstract, pebble-like texture with a high representational form, the signature of Shields’ works. Applying his imagination, research, and welding torch, the sculpture emerged some months later, expressive and realistic.

At no point was any casting or foundry work involved, giving his sculptures a quality which sets his pieces apart form other representational sculpture. “For years, I searched galleries and museums to see if other artists use this process to create realistic sculpture,” he said, but he never found anything similar.

The larger scale opened opportunities for textured surfaces that suggest leather, cloth, wool, hair, eyes, and facial expressions. Shields’ process, as he said himself, was not better than casting, just different. “Some things can be done in casting that I have a great difficulty doing, such as fine creases. Other things I can do much more effectively, such as deep creases.” His ingenuity extended into the creation of his unique tools—slender, lightweight hammers, punches, calipers, and maneuverable stands to aid in producing his work. As he honed his skills and talents, in his last commission, Christ, the Healer (1998), Shields was proud to have replaced the flat-surfaced eyes with concentric rings, giving the impression of ocular depth.

In the courtyard of the Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium stands a seven-foot three-inch statue of Tom Ryman, the riverboat tycoon who built the church that became the Grand Ole Opry. Shields had one photograph from which to work, and that was of Ryan’s face only. “It was tough because that gave me only one angle. I would normally use a model,” he said. “On the other hand, nobody could correct me!” To enlarge the likeness   by 120 percent, he prepared four full-figure drawings of the captain at the pilot’s wheel, learning first about the style of men’s clothing of the period. Details became important: the cutoff the coat, the width the pant legs, the kind of shoes. He visited a riverboat museum in Jeffersonville, Indiana, for additional background. Then followed hours with the welder, copper rods, and pliers.

When commissioned by individuals or a group for a sculpture, the client usually had a subject in mind. From there, Shields developed the details—scale, base, setting, lighting, possibly landscaping—in a series of concept drawings, modifying and refining as needed. His proposals usually included several different postures or, in the case of multiple figures, a series of combinations.

With Shields’ work, several themes evolved. His playground as youth had been outdoors, wandering Louisiana bayous with crayfish and snakes, then in Iowa’s creeks and terraced cornfields. He was eager and curious, often building something, and always drawing. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing and doodling,” he reminisced in an interview in middle age. Many of Shields’ smaller steel sculptures were drawn from recollections of carefree recreation in his own youth.

Shields earned a degree in mathematics and psychology because they had a more “practical application” than art in his estimation. Departing from his primary interest, it was as a college student the he developed a lifelong fascination with philosophy and human reasoning. In preparation for each sculpture, he applied intensive research to these concepts, revealing discoveries which influenced his work and integrating his discoveries into each piece. Some sculptures called for extensive historical research. “The historical authenticity of a sculpture, particularly in regard to dress, is absolutely critical,” Shields said in a magazine article. “I was surprised to find that the Cherokees who walked the Trail of Tears wore pioneer dress. They had their own legal system and alphabet, too,” he cites as an example.

Among the commissioned sculptures Shields did was an old-fashioned microphone with Minnie Pearl’s hat hanging on it, complete with a price tag, for her fiftieth anniversary with the Opry. His largest work is an eight-foot six-inch coal miner which stands at Providence, Kentucky, as a tribute to the men killed in a mining accident there. Part of his preparation was to go into the mines to assess the dress and gear of contemporary miners.

The move to larger-than-life sculptures manifested serious and significant moments in history—the deprivation of Fly Smith and White Path, Cherokee chiefs who died on the Trails of Tears; the pain, fatigue and agitation of three Korean soldiers; the proud isolation of death in the 101st Peacekeeper Memorial; and the solemnity of Lady Justice, among others. Even his final sculpture, an incomplete rendition of Christ, the Healer serves as testimony to the depth of Shields’ work.

In a less well-known body of work, Shields also explored nonrepresentational ideas. He studied complex geometric shapes and experimented with the interplay between light and shadow. Integrating his love of the fundamentals of mathematics with the whimsical qualities of copper mesh, he created a series of abstract and representational sculptures. Some these pieces have the lightness of his early skeletal works while embodying the polished effects of an artist who has mastered his technique, and who was comfortable with form, texture, patina, and proportion. Mobius Ring is one such piece, and it is mounted on his tombstone.

Despite the somber underlying themes of much of his later work, Shields is remembered for his smile, stories, and witty comments, usually follow by unsolicited advice. His robust sense of humor surfaced almost anywhere. Sharing his discoveries with anyone who showed an interest, Shields genuinely loved people and could draw just about anyone into conversation, a skill which served him well as a sculptor. “It’s the artist in each of us who, when numbed by the sameness around us, tries to see the world through different eyes,” Shields said slowly and thoughtfully to a journalist.

In 2001 the Janice Mason Art Museum in Cadiz, Kentucky, exhibited two hundred pieces his work in a retrospective. The audience appreciated the artistry of the sculptures, but even more the memories of the man who created them. The Shields family wrote this in the museum catalog: “Our home and lives were unusually happy, largely because of his wit and total belief in each us. He had the utmost faith and confidence that each of us could do whatever we wanted to do, and we all attempted to live up to his expectations. Love was the key part of his personality, not only for his family, but for people in general. So many anecdotes … show how interesting he found each person he met, and how he would listen to them with total concentration.” Like his sculptures, Steve Shields is remembered as larger-than-life.