Lion Dandies

The robust and spiny flora of the Sonoran Desert inspired artist John Bisbee to create this free-standing sculpture—made entirely of foot-long, galvanized steel spikes—for the John M. Roll United States Courthouse in Yuma.  Bisbee welded 3,000 pounds of nails into 18 nearly identical, radiant spheres and stacked them in an interlocking cluster.  Although Bisbee arrived in Yuma with a general plan for the arrangement of the finished artwork, he determined the final placement and configuration on site at the courthouse, in response to the architectural scale and volume of the entry porch.

Despite being made from a rugged and industrial material, the sculpture’s rounded, organic shapes suggest natural structures, such as a windswept pile of tumbleweeds, a clump of barrel cacti, or—as the artwork’s title implies—puffy dandelions.  For Bisbee, the artwork is about the rewards of physical labor.  He has said: “I think about welding this spike to the one next to it.  I like to be lost in the pattern of making—just to be so aware of one action coming after another.”