“There was never a time when I was not doing art work,” Bryce Pettit says. “I was always making things with my hands. Even in college I was always doing something—woodworking projects (my grandfather was a carpenter) and as a fisherman I would tie flies.”
Pettit, who lives in Durango, Colorado, studied biology as an undergraduate and studied ecology as a graduate student. Armed with his awareness and knowledge of the natural world he gave into the lure of making art—sculpting animals and bringing out their essence. 
Unconquered, bronze, 30 x 24 x 13"Working with inexpensive materials like wood and stone, he discovered the limitations of the media. Learning the dynamics of working with bronze gave him more flexibility. “Wildlife sculptures are often like dioramas—an elk with trees and mountains. They feel like little models. I wanted to do sculpture that that tells a story that’s all about the animal. It was more interesting to learn how to combine artistic design within the animal itself.”
Bronze not only freed Pettit from the effects of the diorama, but allowed him to make sculptures that didn’t need bases or artificial structures to hold them up. The elegant and powerful wingspread and strong grasping talons of Eagle show Pettit at his most expressive.
Blue Morpho (Latitude Series), bronze with patinas, 6 x 6 x 1½"
“I do a lot of anatomy studies,” he says. “It gives me an understanding of where and how bones and muscles connect, how the animal is built, and how it moves.”
He expresses not only the essence of his subjects, but a part of himself. “The power that any piece of art has to connect with another is derived from its authenticity,” he explains. “My sculptures are a window into my soul. I pour into the clay my hopes and dreams, my love, my pain, my insights, my understanding.”
Ascendant, bronze, 20 x 10 x 10"
Blue Morpho (Latitude Series) is “an example of how creativity works,” he says. “As sort of a whim I sculpted a Monarch butterfly since I was interested in its long migrations.
I thought of it as a desktop paperweight. When I cast a few more I discovered there was more power in a grouping.”
Nearly Dawn, bronze, 31 x 8 x 8"
His latest work will be shown in the exhibition Equipoise at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 27 through June 11.
Pettit’s sculptures are demonstrations of equipoise, balancing physically in space, representing the essence of the animal, containing the emotions of the sculptor and eliciting a visceral response in the viewer. —
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