Bobbie Carlyle Shapes Her Monumental Visions in Bronze
By peter Hawkins

The half-formed Herculean man rises up out of the massive slab of battered rock. His chisel is embedded in the stone. His sinewed arm stretches above him, wielding a hammer. He's poised to bring it thundering down on the chisel like the hammer of Thor.

This powerful image of man creating himself out of rock, Self Made Man, is being seen more and more throughout the country in galleries, private collections, and public places. It has struck a chord in many people as a symbol of man carving his character and his future.

A larger-than-life version stands symbolically outside the Douglas County Justice Center in Colorado. The monument inspired the pastor who dedicated the justice center to say, “Those who enter here will try to look at their lives and try to refine their lives – to chip away the bad parts and leave the good.”

You would think it would take a hefty person to create this gigantic hulk of a statue. But if there's anything gigantic about its creator, Bobbie Carlyle of Parker, Colorado , it's her spirit.

She's slim and fair-haired. Standing on a ladder, doing the finishing touches, she had to stretch her arm to reach the Self Made Man's bowed head. Her height, to be precise, is 5-3 3/4 inches. And this maker of giants is the mother of seven.

Bobbie Carlyle has just abandoned her crutches when she worked on this sculpture. She'd been in an accident and suffered from whiplash and a broken pelvis. She was on personal crutches, too, coming out of a divorce and realized her life was about to change dramatically.

“At a point of my life when I was going through the traumatic demise of my marriage, the sculpture took on a life of its own,” says Carlyle. “I feel I was inspired by the piece. The growth that I saw in myself manifested itself in my work.

“This sculpture was a very empowering thing for me to create. I took charge. The sculpture is about taking challenges in life. It became more than me. I went beyond myself.”

The ceilings in her own studio are only 9-feet high and the raised hammer at the top of her sculpture was 10 feet from the ground, so she borrowed a friend's studio to work in.

“My friend took a photograph of me on the ladder next to it, and when I looked at it, I realized it was much bigger than I'd thought it was.”

Six models posed for the Colorado sculptor, making the statue a composite man with assorted body parts. The statue, she says, is about taking responsibility for your own life.One owner is the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. It's made the artist into a businesswoman.

Carlyle didn't cast her first bronze until she was pregnant with her fifth child. The reason she turned to sculpture was simple: “My kids kept getting to my watercolors and ruining the paintings, so I figured bronze was safer. My children have often been my reluctant models, so I can find them in some of my sculptures.”

She even used her son's face in Self Made Man, but “Self Made Man shouldn't look like some whipper-snapper, so I made him look older.”

Children are featured in many of her sculptures. In Flight, a small boy runs forward holding in his outstretched hand a model airplane. A life-size bronze shows a young Indian girl carrying a bow and arrows. A friend's daughter was the model for Hannah – Sunday Escape, showing a barefoot young girl in her Sunday dress.

She has created a series of pioneer women, trying to lend dignity to these women in their daily life. One holds a baby while she is reading, sitting on a laundry basket. Some delicate female figures are designed for fountains. The majestic Phoenix Rising takes her portrayal of women further. The double-sided figure is Phoenix on one side and Earth Mother on the other. She ascends on mighty outstretched wings that recall pre-Colombian art.

There are statues of the American West. Buffalo Soldier portrays a black soldier from the Civil War standing with his rifle over his shoulders. In Duster, a tall, lean cowboy in a long coat readies for his day's work. Pace the Wind shows three unbridled horses surging over a ridge, free as air with their manes flowing.

The theme of Self Made Man comes back in an intriguing, muscular work called Stretch the Limits. The man in this statue is crouching, but precariously balanced on one leg. The sculptor has put him in an impossible pose to show how we can stretch beyond ourselves. The sculpture stretched Carlyle's own limitations. When she'd completed it and stood it up, she was surprised when it balanced.

She has put more than herself into her sculpture and her career. To finance the making of big sculptures like Self Made Man, she had to sell some proptery and get a line of credit on her house. She's had to make herself into a business, to invest big bucks into advertising, and a colorful, dramatic brochure. She had to have the courage to make big financial decisions and to learn from her own mistakes. Coming out of a marriage in which she'd felt repressed, she had to build up her confidence and marketability. “It took courage to become an independent woman,” she says. “I had to learn to toot my own horn.”

All this has taken her beyond what she expected. The ads and brochures have earned her more commissions and got her into better galleries. Her business is big enough and important enough now for people to offer to manage it for her but she prefers to go it alone and learn from her own mistakes.

Response to her work has humbled her. People talk to her from all around the world, admiring this “small-in-stature” woman who creates such mighty work. She hears from women who create their own businesses. Some of them have told her that she needs now to create a monument to Self Made Woman, and that's what she's doing.

She expects to finish Self Made Woman in the fall. It addresses similar themes to the ones in the sculpture that gave such a powerful drive to her career, but it has striking differences. Self Made Man is powerful and muscular. The blow he's about to crack on the chisel looks as if it could smash the rock that he's creating himself from.

Self Made Woman is a gentle work that's soft and pliant. The woman is lithe with supple curves, with a hand casually lifting the flowing waves of her rumpled hair. It could almost be a portrait of its diminutive, but determined creator.

“In Self Made Man, the man chips himself out of stone,” reveals Carlyle. “This woman is sculpted out of clay which is a more pliable material. But clay can be strong, too.”

“I've cut some nicks in it to show that we're not perfect people. We make mistakes, so we keep chipping away at ourselves.”

Self Made Man enabled Carlyle's career to take off. Men have bought small versions for themselves, and wives have bought it for husbands. One owner is the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Self Made Man has made the artist into a businesswoman.

Carlyle didn't cast her first bronze until she was pregnant with her fifth child. The reason she turned to sculpture was simple: “My kids kept getting to my watercolors and ruining the paintings, so I figured bronze was safer. My children have often been my reluctant models, so I can find them in some of my sculptures.”

She even used her son's face in Self Made Man, but “Self Made Man shouldn't look like some whipper-snapper, so I made him look older.”

Children are featured in many of her sculptures. In Flight, a small boy runs forward holding in his outstretched hand a model airplane. A life-size bronze shows a young Indian girl carrying a bow and arrows. A friend's daughter was the model for Hannah, a barefoot young girl in her Sunday dress in the sculpture titled, Sunday Escape.

She has created a series of pioneer women, trying to lend dignity to these women in their daily life. One holds a baby while she is reading, sitting on a laundry basket. Some delicate female figures are designed for fountains. The majestic Phoenix Rising takes her portrayal of women further. The double-sided figure is Phoenix on one side and Earth Mother on the other. She ascends on mighty outstretched wings that recall pre-Columbian art.

There are statues of the American West. Buffalo Soldier portrays a black soldier from the Civil War standing with his rifle over his shoulders. In Duster, a tall, lean cowboy in a long coat readies for his day's work. Pace the Wind shows three unbridled horses surging over a ridge, free as air with their manes flowing.

The theme of Self Made Man comes back in an intriguing, muscular work called Stretch the Limits. The man in this statue is crouching, but precariously balanced on one leg. The sculptor has put him in an impossible pose to show how we can stretch beyond ourselves. The sculpture stretched Carlyle's own limitations. When she'd completed it and stood it up, she was surprised when it balanced.

She has put more than herself into her sculpture and her career. To finance the making of big sculptures like Self Made Man, she had to sell some property and get a line of credit on her house. She's had to make herself into a businesswoman. She had to have the courage to make big financial decisions and to learn from her own mistakes. Coming out of a marriage in which she'd felt repressed, she had to build up her confidence and marketability. “It took courage to become an independent woman,” she says. “I had to learn to toot my own horn.”

All this has taken her beyond what she expected. The ads and brochures have earned her more commissions and got her into better galleries. Her business is big enough and important enough now for people to offer to manage it for her but she prefers to go it alone and learn from her own mistakes.

Response to her work has humbled her. People talk to her from all over the world, admiring this “small-in-stature” woman who creates such mighty work. She hears from women who create their own businesses.

To that end, she has finished Self Made Woman. It addresses similar themes to the ones in the sculpture that gave such a powerful drive to her career, but it has striking differences. Self Made Man is powerful and muscular. The blow he's about to crack on the chisel looks as if it could smash the rock that he's creating himself from.

Self Made Woman is a gentle work that's soft and pliant. The woman is lithe with supple curves, with a hand casually lifting the flowing waves of her rumpled hair. It could almost be a portrait of its diminutive, but determined creator.