The 'Bronze' age: The Gallery ABQ show explores soft hues and solid forms of sculpture and pastels

Gentle paint strokes of light pink brushed on a canvas. Figures hand-sculpted with careful fingers and dipped in bronze.

These are a few things guests will see while viewing the “Bronze and Pastel” show at The Gallery ABQ.

After retiring from medicine in Las Cruces, Marcey Gillespie had some time on her hands and didn’t know what to do. She had always practiced sculpting in her spare time, but once she retired, Gillespie decided to devote herself to creating bronze sculptures.

For the past seven years, Gillespie has improved her skills and has taken her art more serious, even making herself a home studio to practice her craft more often.

The 'Bronze' age: The Gallery ABQ show explores soft hues and solid forms of sculpture and pastels

“I really regarded the last seven years as practice because the more you do, the better you get,” she said. “I’ve always been an artist but I’ve been really serious about it for the last seven years.”

After joining the Sandia Heights Artists Studio Tour, Gillespie was invited to show her work at The Gallery ABQ, a contemporary fine art gallery that hosts shows with guest artists.

Gillespie’s additions to her showing at The Gallery ABQ will feature 10 bronze sculpture figurines. Once a week, Gillespie goes up to Santa Fe to create her sculptures based off of human models. Gillespie often works with nude models, so she is comfortable creating works of art based on various body types.

“Sometimes I alter the pose to something more meaningful to me and sometimes I just delve deep into who that person is and what I think they’re trying to tell me with their pose,” Gillespie said. “Being a doctor, I’ve examined every kind of body you can imagine and we’re all different, yet we’re all the same. Seeing how different bodies move and how every body expresses itself is fascinating.”

Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and so do Gillespie’s figures. Though she tends to work on 18-inch figures, which is considered a ¼-scale life-sized, she has also done life-sized statues and smaller pieces. It takes Gillespie roughly nine hours to begin a statue with a model posing, but the entire piece typically takes 15 to 20 hours.

“Then it goes to a mold maker and the mold maker sends it to a wax guy and the wax gets sent to a Colorado foundry to get cast in bronze and then it’s sent back to Santa Fe, and they repair all the minor defects in the metal and put the base on,” she said. “It’s quite a process to turn it into bronze but it’s a lot of fun.”

Beyond bronze sculptures, Gillespie has a few clay pieces that she is hoping to add to the gallery.

“I hope people appreciate the humanity in everybody and appreciate all the types of bodies and be comfortable in their own body,” Gillespie said.

Pastel painter Stan Davis will also have his art on display. Davis specializes in landscape pastel painting and his art features works like stone formations and large trees that brush against the tips of the sky.