LEATHERSCULPTURE *** Rockport, Texas

One day in May, my daily search through Etsy led me, in a roundabout way, to today’s featured artist. I was reading the shop announcement on the "Glass n Wood" site (which I featured on June 4^th) and saw a link to another shop owned by Francis Roets Bradford. Curious to see if the amazing talent of Phil and Lettie had passed on to their daughter, I went directly to LEATHERSCULPTURE and found, to my delight, that it had.

Francis has been sculpting with leather since 2003 after a visit to South Africa with her parents. While there, they saw local artists painting wildlife images on leather, one of whom added “burning” to her paintings. Inspired by what she saw, Francis began thinking about ways she could take the art “one step further”.

Winning a set of leather tools on an eBay auction got Francis started and she hasn’t stopped. She is completely self-taught, using a basic instruction book and working through it step-by-step to learn the techniques. Once she was comfortable working with the leather and tools, she began adding her own twists. The pyrographic art (burning) of leather split—the backside of a leather skin, normally waste from the thinning process—is Francis’ own technique which she has never seen done anywhere else. The wolf in her mandella (click on photo to enlarge) is an excellent example of her technique.

I’m always interested in an artist’s inspiration for new pieces. Francis’ comes, she told me, when she sees or experiences something, like a visit to King Ranch. She spots a new bird, for instance, and is compelled to carve and paint it.”

Her charging African elephant (see photo) was inspired by her visit to South Africa and was, in fact, created on rare Kudu leather which Francis bought while visiting there. The extreme realism of the piece (and many of her other pieces) was achieved with acrylic paints, using high-quality photographs as a guide to color and detail.

Francis’ attention to detail is amazing. She uses fine burning tools for details, such as the barbs in a bird’s feathers, the wrinkles in the elephant’s skin or the bark of a tree. One square inch of tree bark can consume 30 minutes!

Each of Francis’ leather sculptures are made from a single piece of leather. While the leather is wet, she transfers her design and then uses scalpels to slice into the leather so she can carve and mold it into 3D relief. The back of the raised areas are filled in with a leather paste mixture, insuring that the sculpture will hold it’s 3D form for years to come.

Each of her pieces is sealed with a matte leather finish for protection.

For additional details about the works shown above (plus several more) go to Francis’ Etsy shop, LEATHERSCULPTURE. If you happen to be in Rockport, Texas, you can see her work at the Niche Art Gallery.