ABBOTSFORD, BC –
Behind a blueberry field in Fraser Valley, BC, is a nondescript barn where something extraordinary is being done.
A small team of welders headed by 53-year-old Kevin Stone are putting the finishing touches on a massive metal dragon.
The imposing steel structure is more than 17 meters high and weighs almost 7,000 kilograms.
“It’s a complicated job, but I love what I do and I love the new challenges that each sculpture brings,” Stone said.
Stone is a professional manufacturer of welders. He is also a passionate artist.
“For as long as I can remember, my mom used to complain that I drew on everything. I enjoy being creative and creating interesting pieces.”
In 2003, Stone’s creativity caught the eye of a former boss who asked him to make a gargoyle for the roof of his welding shop.
“I took some scrap metal and worked with it to build it,” Stone said. “The gargoyle prompted me to associate and other large-scale sculptures.”
A steel gargoyle, approximately seven feet tall, was Kevin Stone’s first large-scale sculpture.
Since then, Stone has made numerous large-scale statues, including some depicting eagles soaring and hunting.
In 2011, he landed a contract to create a piece for Dolly Parton’s Tennessee amusement park. The mixed-metal eagle, which has a 55-foot wingspan, “now sits at the entrance to a popular Dollywood roller coaster.”
Kevin Stone’s Dollywood eagle sculpture was unveiled at the American amusement park on February 28, 2012.
Another of Stone’s notable sculptures is a towering Tyrannosaurus Rex. The 15-meter-long dinosaur is made of polished stainless steel and took nearly 20 months to complete.
It was commissioned by a private art collector who plans to install it outside his home on BC’s Okanagan Lake.
“Pretty much everything I build now is a six-figure sculpture,” Stone said. “Many of my clients are based in the United States.”
Almost all of his statues are private commissions costing between $40,000 and $400,000.
However, last year he was approached by a cryptocurrency company looking to create an unusual marketing tool.
“They called me and they wanted me to build a huge goat, but the thing was, they wanted Elon Musk’s head on the goat.”
(BC Artist Kevin Stone)
The company is called Elon GOAT and claims on your website the statue is meant to honor Musk’s “many accomplishments and commitment to cryptocurrency.”
Stone admits he thought the request was “pretty weird” but was also intrigued. After some preliminary planning and negotiations, he agreed to play the billionaire’s head.
the musk bustwhich is made of eight-inch-thick aluminum, took over three months to complete, and is now touring the United States.
“This was just a wild project,” Stone said. “It was fun and too crazy not to want to be a part of it.”
(BC Artist Kevin Stone)
When working on his sculptures, Stone enlists the help of his wife, Michelle, and two welding apprentices. He says that he enjoys sharing his knowledge, because he feels that some of the metalwork he does is a dying art.
“I don’t work with computers,” he said. “I cut everything by hand and, in general, all the sculptures I build are visual, which means that I look at an image and then I enlarge it in my mind and build it.”
Being practical allows Stone to be meticulous with metal. One of his most detailed pieces is the dragon that he says his client wanted to be based on the creature that appears in the TV series “Game of Thrones.”
“It was intimidating at first because I had never seen the show. My wife and I watched the entire first series only to find out exactly what we were building to.”
After researching the program, Stone not only built a replica dragon, but also made it breathe fire.
“It was really difficult to figure out how to create a fire control system, but we finally did it, and now we have this big sculpture that shoots fire,” he said.
Kevin Stone’s metal dragon sculpture has taken over a year to create out of steel and covered in metal scales.
After nearly two years building the dragon, it is now nearing completion and will soon be shipped to its owner who lives in Utah.
With the project nearing completion, Stone is already imagining new metal sculptures in hopes of creating something even bigger.
“My future plan is to build bigger. I’ve always wanted to be known as the artist building the world’s largest metal sculptures, so I’m always looking for the next big challenge.”
T. Rex sculpture by Kevin Stone (Melanie Nagy / CTV News)