Artist Kendra Haste

For many years now huMom has talked about making time to build her canine armature. Size, shape & materials consume her busy head when she should be filling my treat ball. The one material she always clucks about (I did say cluck) is chicken wire. It’s attainable, malleable, sustainable, & 100% recyclable. Taking into account its full life cycle, chicken wire has one of the lightest impacts on the environment, of all engineering materials. Pawsonally, I can’t remember not having a roll or 2 on hand.

This brings me to today’s artist British wildlife sculptor Kendra Haste. Kendra pawduces both public & privately commissioned wild animal sculptures working only with layers of painted galvanized wire atop steel armature. Haste is a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists, the Royal British Society of Sculptors & the Society of Animal Artists

Kendra, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, says she is fascinated by how such a seemingly ordinary medium, chicken wire, is capable of suggesting “the sense of movement and life, of contour & volume, the contrasts of weight & lightness, of solidity & transparency—values that I find in my natural subjects. What interests me most about studying animals is identifying the spirit & character of the individual creatures. I try to create a sense of the living, breathing subject in a static 3D form, attempting to convey the emotional essence without indulging in the sentimental or anthropomorphic.”

In 2010, Kendra Haste was commissioned by Historic Royal Palaces to create 13 sculptures around the Tower of London that will remain on view through 2021.

Let’s take a sniff of her pawtacular work.