Coming Soon: A Bird of Prey for the City of Richmond
2022 is shaping up to be another exciting year at the studio. The City of Richmond, CA has commissioned SAS to create a sculpture of the new official city bird, the osprey.
We are just in the early stages right now, and have created a clay model using a paper crafting kit osprey as reference. Counting feathers on a model is more precise than from a photo. The project calls for a metal sculpture, and the challenge here is taking the wonderful durability and strength of metal, without losing the lightness and speed of a bird in flight. Stainless steel sheets should prove to be more effective than cast bronze.
In order to get a sense of the proper scale for the sculpture, our team created two quick models out of cardboard, one with a 7-foot wingspan, and the other with a 10-foot wingspan. We’re excited that when presented to the city, we’ll be moving forward with the larger-than-life option.
Ospreys love to catch fish, and they have the incredible talons and instinct to grip a live fish in the water and then flip it to its most aerodynamic position, so you can see ospreys in the San Francisco Bay Area flying with a whole fish below them facing the exact same way. This may provide the ideal attitude for the final sculpture.