Dennis Weber
by Audrée Peters

Dennis Weber of Fountain Hills is an artist who has developed his own category of art with works that no other artist creates.

This intensely driven artist is propelled by ideas flying around in his mind like honey bees in a rose garden, and he faces each day with excitement and anticipation.

After creating ingenious three-dimensional displays for retailers for 15 years, Weber says it was “a natural progression from improvising with unusual objects and materials for displays, to turning it into creative art.”

His unique art form, which he calls “found art” has been evolving for many years, and his experiments have taken the form of everything from sculpted blades of grass to unusual forms and applications on furniture.

The essence of his work is a potpourri of media that include “found pieces” of wood from the desert that he enhances with sculpting clay, paint, patinas and anything else that will complete a piece that may become a miniature fantasy or a full-size realistic animal or object.

Weber’s quest for the basis of his art usually begins in the desert, where a piece of wood, dried cactus skeleton or other seasoned object will draw his intent scrutiny and cause an explosion of ideas.

Within days it is transformed into a bird, totem spirit or a fantasy character.

“I start out with a pencil rendering on a sketch pad, and I do four to five sketches before I am happy with them,” he says. “The final sketch is on graph paper for scale.”

Weber admits he gets so wrapped up in his work that many hours will go by without even realizing it.

 “I can’t stop working once I get on a piece,” he says. “My wife says I’m never going to be done because there is so much in here,” he says of the passion for his art that compels him.

Weber emphasizes that, unlike painting, sculpting “is really about the actual pose because there are no backgrounds.

 “You have one element basically to work with,” he says. “It’s more than just art, it’s (also) engineering that you have to deal with.”

Weber likes to do his ideas in multiple series rather than single creations.

“I think about more than one. I think about a series of pieces, usually three to five,” he says.

This is partly because once he starts a series he keeps improving and changing the works with each piece.

It is also because he doesn’t want to waste a good idea.

“And I have to get each of them out of my system,” he says of his inspirations.

And once he has accomplished that goal, he is ready to move on.

“I’m always trying something new,” he says. I just can’t do the same thing over and over.”

While Weber has done other forms of art, including relief wall paintings, he really loves the sculpting, working with his hands on a three-dimensional piece.

“There is a lot more wood sculpture in what I do, and I use Sculpy (art clay) on them, which is normally kiln dried, and dries like plastic,” he says.

But the kiln is too slow for this hyperactive artist, and he has developed his own method of curing it with a blowtorch.

“This way I can also do something large and have no boundaries for size. I’m not limited to kiln size.”

Some of his favorite series have been the totem spirits of varying sizes, and crocodile figures, some life-size, like the one in his back yard that is nestled in the foliage next to his pool. It is entitled, “Wing and A Prayer.” An exhausted bird perched on the crocodile’s tail is praying the crocodile won’t see him.

“I always bring nature into my work,” he says.

His personal favorites are his bear fetishes, an idea he says he got from the Navajo.

On a guided jeep tour in Canyon de Chelly several years ago, it was explained to him that the bear fetish “takes away your burden.” Suffering from kidney failure, he feverishly made bear fetishes.

He was rewarded, four years ago, when doctors discovered his wife, Connie, was a rare match for a transplant, and she gave him a kidney.

“And I’m fortunate that God gave me the talent to do something to get me through that,” he says, looking back.

But then, Weber doesn’t approach his art the usual way, either.

He understands that many artists do what customers want. But he goes about it the other way around.

“Mine’s heartfelt,” he says.

Weber has to create what he feels, what moves him and what triggers his fancy. And people love the results.

“I’m not looking for realism, because there is no realism in these,” he says of the pieces that are part of his current fantasy series. “It’s more about the expression of the piece.”

The expression emerges as he sculpts the pieces. He makes conjectures while he works about what his characters and what they are doing and saying. They each have personalities for him, and are animated in their actions.

One fairy-like character is gently cupping bubbles in his hands, a second one is delightedly juggling her bubbles, and another is mesmerized by a firefly (depicted with a tiny electrical light Weber has incorporated into the sculpture).

All convey innocence, and joy in their discovery of the world around them.

In varying sizes from six inches to three feet, Weber accents the pieces to give a metallic look, with paints with patinas.

Weber has had exhibits, both solo and gallery, all over Arizona, including a recent, long-term solo exhibit at BRIO Fine Arts Center in Scottsdale, and participates in many juried shows.

He currently has pieces of his fantasy series displayed in the Fountain Hills Cultural Council’s 12th anniversary juried show at the Fountain Hills Community Center, which runs through Feb. 22.

What will Weber’s next series of creations be?

Even he is not sure.

But it could strike him like lightning and grow like wildfire, just from spotting an intriguing piece of dead wood poking up through the sand in the desert.

For more information, or to talk with Dennis Weber, call him at (480) 816-1776.

This artist was featured February 2007.