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For Mike Stanley...I'm a one-man operation. Art is his life. I can't imaging doing anything else.
starting at a young age he knew he had a passion for it
I was also a big comic book nerd,
you know, I started drawing from comic books
and was really into that. I knew I had
some skill in it, that i really enjoyed doing it.
But I didn't know I could make money doing it, but his love for art
took a minor detour
It was just a long progression. I
actually went to school at Texas A&M
for marine biology.
my heart wasn't in it, so I switched to art and it just kind of took off from there.
Taking Stanley to places
he could only dream of...
Got to see western europe and
AND UP AND DOWN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, REAL FUN. And I love traveling. Get to see alot of different things.
a half-a-dozen states here in the U.S., Stanley soon found himself in one of the worst situations.
IT WAS JUST AWFUL, IT WAS JUST TERRIBLE.
a half-a-dozen states here in the U.S., Stanley soon found himself in one of the worst situations.LOST EVERYTHING THAT I OWNED. LOST THE PLACE THAT I WORKED, LOST MY HOUSE
Stanley was living in Louisiana in late august two thousand five when hurricane katrina made landfall
destroying everything in it's path.
but even those tragic sites couldn't stop him
I WENT BACK THERE TO TRY TO REBUILD FOR ABOUT 3 MONTHS, YOU KNOW
IT WAS JUST REALLY DIFFICULT TO START OVER.
So he knew he had to move on with his life.
after katrina i lost everything had to start over somehow
so i decided to apply for grad
schools...it was either take out loans from a bank
or take out student loans to further my education
and make a better life for myself
But starting over wasn't so easy.because i lost everything my portfolio, all my work, nobody would accept me
nobody would take me in.
you know you
Until he applied and was accepted to Iowa State University
since that day nearly seven years ago stanley's come a long way.
it was terrible but it made me a stronger man
Stanley went from a grad student to a lecturer in the
colleges design When I moved here I had nothing
a mattress and a bag of clothes.
Now I have so much stuff
so much stuff
This is Carbon 6 studio. We have two rooms for a gallery. Like his 3 thousand square foot art studio in
downtown Ames. And that's just where
his rebuilding story begins. A Polk County conservationist asked him to sculpt a piece for a new exhibit at
jester park
Stanley named it Wapiti. It's the native american word for Elk.
And after several visits to elk reserves to observe and draw sketches of them. At each place I probably
thirty sketches, really quick and at times I'd do a really
refined sketch, I'd be there for an hour or over the course of an hour I'd get 10 sketches done.
stanley spend months sculpting this life-size elk.
Each antler took about 2 weeks to make,
The body
took
about a month,anywhere from 150 and 200 different pattern pieces. The approximately 600 pound sculpture was unveiled
during the ceremony just a park in late may as part of the parks brand-new
Elk and Bison Plaza
which overlooks an upclose reserve with both bison and elk
we normally see these animals from 60-70 yards away
and when you are actually able to get close like this you can understand the scale
of these animals
how strong and the beauty of them. Dozens of people showed up to see the new
sculpture as it was unveiled. When it got unveiled listening to everybody oohh and aahh
it was wonderful. I don't know what to say, I'm kind of overwhelmed by the
reaction right now. A day that he and other artists live for.
absolutely, absolutely, i mean, personally
i get nervous on days like this to be in public i'm more of the the
builder, the doer, but his is the cherry on the top.
it was his intense feeling of pride you know
that people
really enjoyed it and understand that the
and can appreciate and setting and Stanley himself appreciates
I'm very biased
I really think it turned out well
pecially when he looks back at the work he put in to get to this point.
at times I had welded the metal to the table,
and had one piece
bending over like this
i had the welder in my mouth and i was holding it trying to tack this thing in place
But he says it was worth every single minute.
i would love to someday bring my kids and my family here in the future and show them
what I made in 2012
it's about
me coming back fifty years and see it.
from the devastation of hurricane katrina into the glory of his
work right here in central Iowa, now looking back you know it was actually a
piviotal point in my life, a lot of my artwork kind revolves around that point right now
Michael stanley is using challenges in his life to inspire others
through his works of art
"if you can really think about it, you can actually do it, if you have a goal set you can actually accomplish anything.