Seth Sebastian In the midst of a successful career in sculpting, John Lopez found a fantastic new direction: scrap iron sculpting. I look forward to every new creation, and it’s also helping me grow and develop as an artist,” he says. As he John explains on his website: “This strange detour started when his beloved aunt, Effie Hunt, died in a rollover car accident. Uncle Geno opened welding shop, and his home to Lopez, who finished a fence around the cemetery ran out of material. The ranch is 3-5 miles from a post office or the nearest city, so he went looking for the scrap iron on site. He then made a little angel peering on the very top of the gate, and completed a gate into the cemetery. The project gave him much personal satisfaction and everybody who saw it was surprised at the result. A career path that was new was born because of a cemetery. Not wanting to depart from his casting expertise, John found a way to merge the two art-forms into a new sculpture of everyday objects mixed with limited-edition bronze castings. Hybrid Steel Artwork, a sculptural fusion of figurative and funk, a blend of iron and bronze.”
