Bill Mang cuts, welds and hammers his personal visions into steel, bronze and other natural materials to create sculptures of powerful beauty and startling originality. With tools of metal and torch, his works find their inspiration in the pop culture world of gothic sci-fi, fantasy, dragons and aliens. Yet Mang also sculpts natural figures which reveal a more contemplative side, and abstracts which hold powerful insights into human nature. Whatever the subject or mood of his pieces, whether the gleaming hide of a horse or the enigmatic "Forgotten Warrior", Mang brings out the multiplicity of possible textures from metal. With his extraordinarily wide range of subjects, he explores how metals interact with each other, or with glass, and, of course, with the space they inhabit and the light he manipulates on their surfaces. Bill Mang has shown his work in many venues in California, and also applies his skill to domestic designs such as furniture and fixtures, in both metal and exotic wood. He was commissioned to sculpt a portrait of an award-winning Welsh pony, and the piece, which was in the 2005 California State Fair Fine Art Exhibit, received an Award of Excellence. |