Each sculpture is individually handmade; a one of a kind piece. They are made of steel, stainless steel or bronze and brazed together with either bronze or silver solder. The steel pieces are usually painted flat black. They can be for indoors or outdoors and made to stand on a base, to hang as mobiles or to be wall mounted. Rudy has created musicians, athletes and wildlife as well as portraiture and caricature.
Four years at the School of Architecture developed the skill of visualizing 3 dimensional things such as buildings and accurately describing them by means of 2 dimensional drawings.
That ease with lines of ink enabled him to make a living as an illustrator of wildlife and old buildings for several years. He says it was not a vast leap to “sketch” in space with lines of steel with the same agility. In the early 80’s he left Canada for several years to crew on tall ships in the Caribbean and Atlantic and to travel Europe in his VW bus.
Tying the pieces of his past together, he settled into a life of self-employment by creating, showing and successfully selling his work around the world. As he put it “it’s just a small boat but at least it’s my hand on the tiller.” The boat has not only remained afloat but has been making way for over 20 years.
Rudy Kehkla: January 12, 1950 – June 18, 2021 https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?n=rudy-kehkla&pid=199181790
Artist’s Statement
Sculpting air…wire holograms…
My sculpture is mainly composed of air. I use bits of wire only to define that part of air to which I want to draw my audience’s attention. Minimal visual cues to assist the mind to define space, enclose volume, provoke mood or silently hear music or sound.
Sometimes no more than a simple gesture, my work can consist of a strand or two, or be a highly detailed study consisting of hundreds of pieces of wire.
I find the shadows cast by each of these 3D sketches fascinating. I use 2 or 3 halogen spotlights to simultaneously cast a variety of perspectives as I work. The shadows act as a 2D reference plane and help my mind make the leap from sketching on a flat surface with a line of ink, to sketching a hologram in space with a line of steel or bronze. I expect an end result that works perfectly from any viewpoint, through 360 degrees.
I’ve always had a fascination with Alexander Calder’s assemblages and have recently experimented with kinetic sculpture myself. I use stainless steel rod, stained glass, copper, bronze and cobbles of granite. The components are engineered by harnessing Archimede’s principles of fulcrums, levers and loads. The results have been quite interesting, particularly watching them move endlessly in the wind.