To get the precise really feel into his items, Travis Pond likes to let concepts run freely and spontaneously whereas he’s sculpting—a technique that MIG welding facilitates simply.
When Travis Pond was 19, he bought the third metallic sculpture he’d ever welded—a fantastic blue heron. In a means, that piece has come to represent an artwork profession that’s flown to better heights than any he reached when he was slicing faculty to hit the ski slopes in Montana.
“I majored in snowboarding,” Pond, now 50, joked about his first faculty expertise. “The varsity didn’t ask me to come back again as a result of they didn’t supply that as a serious. So, I moved again to Portland [Oregon] and took lessons at a neighborhood faculty, one being sculptural welding. As quickly as I discovered metallic as a medium for making artwork, nothing else would do. I used to be so impressed with the immediacy of construction that you possibly can obtain with welding.”
Regardless of switching majors a number of instances throughout the arts, Pond landed a scholarship on the San Francisco Artwork Institute. Whereas enrolled there, he labored because the studio technician within the sculpture division. He additionally discovered an apprenticeship with Bay space artist Carl Dern, making high-end designer furnishings and aiding Dern with sculptures.
“I realized the way to end metallic on a complete new stage—working with acids for patinas in addition to what finishes to use wherein circumstances,” Pond stated of the expertise. He credited his time at SFAI and with Dern for getting him the place he’s at the moment.
That may be Metal Pond Studios, south of Portland, the place the avid outdoorsman and novice arborist has lived and labored for greater than a decade now. His work has received quite a few awards, together with, most just lately, the 2025 Percival Plinth Venture Individuals’s Alternative Award from the town of Olympia, Wash.
Pond creates his items with inspiration from fable, legend, and nature—buffaloes, dragons, bears, cranes, foxes, eagles, even musical devices. He additionally fabricates purposeful work corresponding to furnishings, gates, and architectural parts. He fashions his items nearly solely from reclaimed and repurposed metals that he harvests from an enormous array of agricultural, industrial, and concrete sources: microwaves, bikes, silverware, previous military gear, and surplus tractors included. It’s all lower up with plasma cutters and band saws and meticulously organized in his studio.
“At first, it was what I might afford, what was round,” Pond stated when requested what first sparked him to make use of scrap metallic. “It was what I linked to. The viewers can relate to all these supplies as a result of they’re all from elements and items of your life. It was recycling earlier than it was cool. And I believe the tales and histories of the supplies have a much bigger voice typically than the sculptures themselves.
“I attempt to have as many random items as doable—greater than 50% greater than what I believe I’m going to wish for any given mission.” He stated spontaneity and quickness are how he infuses the delicate gestures and strategies of motion in his items.
Early on, Pond took to MIG welding, a lot in order that regardless of not being allowed to make use of any electric-arc welding in his first lessons, he purchased his personal MIG welding machine to make use of in his mother and father’ storage as a result of it lent itself so readily to his fast-paced fashion.
“It’s only a heavy-object scorching glue gun,” he quipped. “In order that helps with the spontaneity, as properly, being that it’s so rapid with that device.”
This sculpture of an eagle in flight took Pond 4 months to assemble.
One bigger movement-inspired mission that Pond is especially pleased with is a huge eagle in flight—13 ft. tall with a wingspan to match —that he spent 4 months developing for a veterans memorial close to Portland.
Comprising the sculpture are a World Warfare I helmet, artillery shells, and elements of tanks and Humvees, all collected from donations from veterans and a collaborative effort with from Joint Base Lewis-McChord close to Tacoma, Wash. The larger-than-life piece even contains Pond’s grandfather’s trenching device from World Warfare II.
“It actually has a ton and a half of cool army stuff in it,” Pond stated. “That was in all probability essentially the most memorable side as a result of the veterans who see it will probably acknowledge elements and items that make up the entire. It’s in regards to the veterans and their journey. It’s very private and fairly an honor to have had the chance to create the sculpture.
“We discovered a pile of machine weapons going to scrap once we had been on the bottom, however I wasn’t allowed to have them—guidelines or one thing—however the subsequent day two officers drove down with a smaller pile of all of them de-milled and lower up so I might incorporate them into the sculpture.”
Generally the fabric involves Pond able to go, however another jobs, like his present fee from the American Affiliation of Nurserymen, require barely extra work on the entrance finish. That sculpture depicts a line of leaves blowing down a 30-ft. wall. Made totally from repurposed metal, the road begins with a leaf that’s greater than 5 ft. excessive and ends with one simply 8 in. tall. To seek out the precise materials, Pond has been sorting and arranging piles of metallic—slicing them up, bending them, and softening the sharp edges in a deburring machine—for months now.
In the midst of that, he’s been engaged on a stainless-steel seated fox and another smaller sculptures simply to maintain the inventive movement getting into his thoughts. And whereas, ideally, Pond would like to commit extra time to the pursuits that intrigue him most—mythology and classical ideas—he’s been at this lengthy sufficient to know what butters his bread.
“I’ve a number of theories that I’ve been engaged on for many years now, and you recognize, I’d love to have the ability to comply with these pursuits as a substitute of commissions, however new challenges are good and that’s how the system works. We gotta do what we gotta do to comply with our hearts.”
