When I first met Kevin Kirking he was coming off his 30th art show. He featured 10 bronze sculptures at the Garden of Artistry in Sandpoint. Today, he’s back in the studio in the shop behind his house working on seven more.
Kevin is an accomplished sculptor of Western art. His bronze castings decorate homes and businesses across the country. Each piece not only honors Western and Native American life and culture, it mimics it. He researches his subject matter and with great attention to historical accuracy, he recreates it. Northwest wildlife, tribes, cowboys, battles. Kevin is as much a storyteller as he is a sculptor.
“We are all about stories,” he says, settling into his workstation, where his seven unfinished pieces await his attention. “Our lives are grounded in them.”
Kevin surveys his projects: A dancer on the shores of a lake, a desert scene, a golden retriever in the reeds, a bust of an old cowboy, a horse with a Native American rider, a Calvary horseman, and a rodeo bull.
With Ella Fitzgerald singing in the background, he rolls his stool to his table and pulls the bull toward him. In about two months, it will be finished. He’ll call it “Getting the Run Around” and it will capture a typical rodeo scene. Until then, there’s much to do.
He’s only now shaping the bull, getting the proportions down, the movement right. He calls it the grunt work; the hard part before the gratifying detail work. He reaches into a small crockpot and pulls out a chunk of gray molding clay. It’s warm and malleable. He pulls off a small piece and with his thumb works it into the side of the bull. Kevin sculpts with clay or wax. Bronzing comes later, in a foundry in Kalispell, Montana.
Pull and press, pull and press. It’s almost rhythmic. And Kevin, who clearly is in his element, looks as if he’s been an artist all of his life.
Except, he hasn’t.
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Kevin didn’t study art in college. He didn’t struggle waiting for his big break. He didn’t starve. He was a businessman, a self-described serial entrepreneur who had a successful career in technology. It wasn’t until the early 1990s when he began to focus on sculpting. Then, it was just a hobby.
His interest developed much earlier, though. As a kindergartener, in Mrs. Fawcett’s class, he sculpted a wolf’s head out of clay.
“They were astounded by the accuracy,” he says. “I’ve always had an ability to create something in clay and get it accurate. As I got older, it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to do this.“
Kevin’s passion for Western art came about through multiple influencers. As a Boy Scout, he spent a lot of time outdoors around animals. He grew up hunting, fishing and camping. His cousin studied Native American culture. His uncle was a cattle rancher. His granddad traded horses. Kevin personally knew members of tribes from his time building interpretive programs for national parks.
“I became more fascinated with it as I became more involved in it,” he says.
When he retired in 2010, Kevin’s avocation became his new profession. He found quick success. The first piece he sold was the second piece he had ever sculpted professionally. It was called “Breaking Camp Early,” and it depicted a mama bear chasing a man up a rock. He sold it to a guy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for $2,450. He was exhilarated. “To see someone who would actually buy art,” he explains. “You hear about it, but it’s an ethereal thing.”
He doesn’t do it for the money. But the sales, he says, fuel his passion and keep him going. His eyes light up when he talks about his work. He’s relaxed. He’s smiling. He is a man doing exactly what he was meant to do.
It’s been a month since I met Kevin. I’ve returned to his studio to see how his pieces were progressing. He escorts me through his house to his shop out back. We pass several bronze sculptures on tables and on walls. They’re all his. He calls his house his “quasi gallery.”
In his shop, behind his boats, dirt bikes and other toys, is his brightly lit studio. Many of the same pieces line his workstation. But there are new ones, too.
Today, Kevin is listening to smooth jazz while he works. He shows me the bull. It’s come a long way. Kevin has shaped it, smoothed it and set it in the position it will be cast. The detail work has just begun, but you can already see the bull’s expression and the muscles in its legs and back.As long as Kevin can maintain momentum, he’ll be finished in about a month. Then, the piece heads to the foundry, where 16 of them will be cast. He’s already received the green light from his wife.
“She’s crucial,” he says. “When I get to a point that’s make or break and I need an honest candid opinion, I go to her and say ‘what do you think?”
She had only one suggestion for the bull: make it angrier. Kevin agreed. He worked on the eyes and adjusted the bull’s position, giving it a fiercer look.
Judy’s feedback matters. Over the years, Kevin has scrapped numerous pieces before they ever saw the foundry. Some were tossed in the early stages. Others were nearly finished. Hours, days, weeks, months of hard work reduced in seconds to a large ball of clay. He admits it’s painful. But it has to be done.
“Sometimes you’ve got to start over,” he says. “You do it at least once.”
It always astonishes Judy. “How can you destroy something like that?” she says.
He smiles. “I just do.”
By Kristina Lyman
As Featured In: Winter/Spring 2016