For the artist JEFRÊ
The Buddha
A twenty-foot seated figure, CNC-cut from metal, galvanized and mossed — with its hands shaped into a heart.
Commissioned byThe artist JEFRÊ
LocationExhibition work
Height20 feet
MaterialsMoss over CNC-cut galvanized steel
DetailHands shaped into a heart
The brief
A human figure is the hardest thing to make out of foliage. An animal can be interpreted and still read; a seated person at twenty feet either has the proportions right or looks wrong to everybody who sees it.
So this one was drawn before it was built. The metal was cut by CNC to the drawing, piece by piece, then welded into a body — and only then did anything green go near it.
A figure this size begins as a drawing. Commissions of any scale start the same way — see custom made topiary.
Galvanized before it was green.
The bare frame was galvanized over every surface including the welds, which is where outdoor steel fails first. On a piece that will be photographed at every stage of its build, that also means the sculpture underneath is finished in its own right — it looks deliberate bare.
The same construction sits under everything we make for outdoors; the difference here is only that the shape came off a drawing instead of out of a pair of hands. The galvanizing step is the same one every outdoor piece gets.
The bare galvanized frame is a finished object in its own right; we sell them that way in wire frame topiary.
From metal, to moss.
In the workshop
Drawing, metal, moss.
Three states, in order — and the middle one is the reason it lasts.
The drawing
A CAD sheet setting out every metal piece before anything was cut. At this scale the proportions have to be decided on paper; there is no adjusting a twenty-foot figure once it is welded.
The galvanized frame
Cut, welded and galvanized. This is the sculpture — everything after it is surface.
The moss
Applied by hand over the frame, following the form. The hands were shaped and checked as their own sub-assembly before they went near the body.
Everything else on the figure serves the gesture: two hands meeting to make a heart.
The artist
Shown as One Love.
The piece was made for JEFRÊ, whose exhibition work has been covered by the Orlando Museum of Art and the art press. The gesture gives the work its name.
- ClickOrlando JEFRÊ at the Orlando Museum of Art ↗
- Cultured Magazine Points of Connection ↗
- MonsterXP Building the interactive museum exhibit ↗
A collaboration with PondCreek Studios.
Specification
What it’s made of.
- Design
- CAD drawing, dimensioned before fabrication
- Cutting
- CNC-cut metal, piece by piece
- Frame
- Welded steel
- Finish
- Galvanized over the whole frame, welds included
- Covering
- Moss, applied by hand
- Height
- 20 feet
- Feature
- Hands meeting to form a heart
- Use
- Exhibition and gallery display
From the same workshop
Where does a piece like this come from?
The same frames, foliage and finishes that built this one — sold ready-made or commissioned to your drawing.
Planning something like this?
Tell us what you’re picturing.
Send a photo or a sketch with your dimensions and date. We come back with a design, a price and a delivery date — then build it in our own workshop.
- 4–10 weekstypical build time
- Any scaletabletop to 40 feet
- US & Canadashipping and install
