greg jones

gregjones3d.vsco.co I am a visual artist/sculptor originally from the North Peace country, I currently live with my wife in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I have two amazing kids who currently live in Fairview, which is also my home town. While I consider myself a professional artist and have for 25 years, I am always employed in some way that is complimentary to my art career. I am presently employed as a ranch manager on a privately owned cabin property which allows me to work on my sculptures in my studio or ranch shop in the off season and stay close to wilderness and nature, of which is a great source of inspiration. My artwork is very connected to my past in many ways. I grew up on a sheep farm in northwestern Alberta and was forced to learn resourcefulness to help keep the farm operating. I am a metal sculptor with a background of 25 years of welding, machining and all aspects of industrial fabrication, mechanical and maintenance related in several industries including oilfield, agricultural, construction, industrial plant and factory, as well as prop building in the movie and theatre set building industry. I have also spent time as a studio assistant to internationally known artists like Katie Ohe, and Brian Cooley. My scratch-built sculptures often involve extremely labour intensive fabricating using all types of dimensional steel; often times recycled from my local scrap yards. I sometimes take advantage of engineered metal parts to create simple, clean shapes to finish often as non-representational sculptures with reference to seedheads, deciduous cones, rotational symmetry, and land formations. The shapes erosion makes, melting ice, washed out gullies, undulating wheat fields on rolling hills, man made land formations juxtaposed to natural; such as a road's relationship to a field with a ditch dividing or a cloverleaf interchange, or prairie fields meeting creek valleys. I am very aware of west coast and northern native mythology, and have a great respect for the work of the Gitxsan, Tsimshain and Haida people, of whom I became familiar with during my 8 years of reforestation employment back in the '80's and early '90's. I trained for 7 years in the visual arts and attended 4 colleges, graduating from the Alberta College of Art in 1992 as a Sculpture major/Painting minor and have exhibited my watercolour paintings for many years. While I have not exhibited very many of my sculptures I have been accumulating ideas and drawin