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SALT LAKE CITY — Artist Stephen Kesler thinks big. At the moment, he’s thinking a lot about a 30-foot iguana.
“It happened so quick, I haven’t had a lot of time to really reflect back on what’s happened the past four years of my life,” Kesler says.
Kesler started small, with a lump of clay.
As a graphic artist, Kesler had worked in only two dimensions but was intrigued by hyper realistic Australian sculptor Ron Mueck, who produces haunting human figures at exaggerated scales. Kesler asked for the clay as a Christmas stocking stuffer
“The first piece I made was a small elephant, 3 by 6 inches, and every piece just got larger and larger and I haven’t put down clay for a day after that,” he says.
When his brother Phil, also an artist, died of cancer, Kesler spent a year sculpting a bust of him.
“It just felt right,” he says. “I don’t know if it was kind of a way to deal with grieving about it or what, but I look at it as I spent a year with my brother. I call it more of a learning and grieving process at the same time.”
When Kesler got word that Brent Anderson, a marine biologist, was trying to open an aquarium in Utah, he contacted Anderson and volunteered to help design a website.
Since he was a kid, Kesler has had a love of marine life.
“I would memorize every single whale back then," he says. "I probably know half or maybe three-quarters of them now, but I knew the name and size of every single whale.”
Today, Kesler wears that love on his skin. Tattooed manta rays swim across his back. On his right leg, a sperm whale battles a giant squid.
Eventually the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium moved into its home in Draper. By then, Kesler had transitioned from two- to three-dimensional artwork.
“So I emailed him (Anderson) and said ‘let’s put something big in your lobby,’” Kesler says.
They put something big in the lobby — the biggest fish on the planet. Kesler sculpted a life-sized whale shark and some manta rays.
The artist, along with three of his brothers, have since created an 8-foot leatherback turtle, two giant poison dart frogs, a sperm whale, a giant squid, a 50-foot humpback whale and a 19-foot calf for the aquarium. As visitors enter the building, they instantly get a sense of the scale of these marine giants.
“A lot of these I did because I wanted to see them, too," Kesler says. "Like I wanted to walk underneath the whale shark and I want to walk underneath the humpback.”
Kesler and his brothers are finishing a giant iguana, 30 feet long and 14 feet high, a commission for the Red Iguana 2 restaurant.
Kesler says thinking big and sculpting big come more easily to him.
“It’s easier for me to envision how I approach something just walking around it than having a small (sculpture) in my hand, trying to do little eyes," he says.
Some might look at giant iguanas, giant squids and whales and see insurmountable monsters. Kesler sees seductive challenges.
“There (was) never a time I was too afraid to try anything in any of these projects,” he says.
“When anyone says, you know, ‘I don’t know how to sculpt. I couldn’t do that,’ well I didn’t either. I opened the box I got for Christmas and three years later, this is what happened,” he says, referring to the mother humpback over his shoulder. “Open up a box, and there might be a whale inside.”
Kesler is planning to unveil his iguana at its new home, the Red Iguana 2 Restaurant at 866 W. South Temple, on Oct. 31.
