It is a pleasure to share my art with you in MySpace. Sculpting is my passion, and I would enjoy meeting other like-minded art lovers to share thoughts and compare ideas.
Lonny Etzel grew up in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. He has always been fascinated with the Indian culture, an interest he developed in his younger years when he found arrowheads and saw petroglyphs on stones while roaming his childhood grounds.
It was during his education at Santa Barbara City College and the University of California, his passion for sculpting arose. Lonny spent time in Europe and North Africa studying sculputre and its uses in architectical structures. He loves traveling, listening to people talk, and learning about cultures and history.
In 2006 he got married to his Swedish wife, Eva. They share their time between Santa Ynez Valley and his log cabin in Wyoming together with his young son, Mason.
Lonny has just finished a commission of a stone sculpture in Agoura Hills, Los Angeles, based on the Chumash Native California legend - The Sparks of The Sun
Kaqunup?mawa / meaning "A Radient Child Born on the 24th of December"
"The Sun carries a torch of tightly rolled bark to light the world. After his daily journey across the sky, he snaps his torch to throw sparks, which are the stars and the planets in the night sky."
The statue came to life like this in Lon's own words:
"The starting weight was 60 tons. I dug it out of the quarry using the mining equipment that was there, on the top of a mountain at 8000 feet at the Wyoming/Idaho border close to Yellowstone Park. We saw moose, and there were wolves in the area as well. The temperature seemed to constantly hover around the freezing point. (But by the end of the project down at Agoura Hills, the temperature was 115 degrees some of the days.)
With dynamite and six weeks of prepped carving I took it down to 30 tons and then shipped it to Solvang CA, where I spent the next eights months finishing it. The final measures on the statue is now; weight is approximately 20 tons, height 10.3 feet and 9.5 feet wide"
Also visit:
www.lonetzel.com
www.stonecarverlonetzel.com
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Below you can see the sculpture grow from raw travertine stone to finished statue.