LOOK – Sculpture
Artist or Scientist? Both
You’d know it as marble, but Bob Sievers sometimes refers to his preferred raw material by another name: calcium carbonate. That happens when the sculptor is also a research chemist.
“My science has informed my art, and my art has informed my science, ” said Sievers, a Ƶ chemistry professor who took up sculpting in the 1980s as a diversion from academic and entrepreneurial life. (He’s also formed two biotechnology firms and served as a Ƶ regent.)
In 1990 Sievers purchased 35,000 pounds of marble from Missouri and shipped it to Boulder on an 18-wheeler. He’s been chipping away at it ever since. In all, he’s produced 55 sculptures.
“I could do more if I did smaller things,” he said. “But I like to do life-size pieces.”
Besides human forms — a ballerina’s leg, say, or a nun — he favors natural phenomena as subjects: Owls, flowers, dolphins, buffalo, salt crystals seen under a scanning electron microscope.
Sievers has sold or donated many works, some decidedly abstract, some in alabaster, acrylic glass or bronze. All four Ƶ campuses have at least one. Severalare on display at Ƶ Boulder, including his favorite, “Calla Lily,” pictured above.
Photos by Glenn Asakawa