Selected Artist: MICHAEL J. BOYCE

Though he has been an artist for many years and was considered one of the world’s top-five taxidermists, Mike Boyce is relatively new to the medium of bronze. His realistic, life-sized sculptures capture the spirit of nature and the delicate relationship between humans and wildlife in what he calls "the dance of life. His pieces are intended as a tribute to the ancient interdependence between man and animal, with its overtones of survival and spirituality.

"We are all descendents of that primitive call," he explains.

Although Boyce is most directly inspired by the works of master sculptors such as Rodin and Michelangelo, he sees all art, including his own, as part of a chain that extends far back in time to the first paintings on cave walls.

"It's part of the human drama that everybody relates to at some point in their life."

At an early age, Mike discovered his love of art, inspired as he watched his father, Fred, paint. He studied at Loveland Art Academy in Colorado. Mike’s artistic influences include being a hunter of exotic animals as well as living in Africa with the Masai to dog-sledding in the arctic. His curiosity and love of nature along with his thorough understanding of animal habitats, muscles and movements make his sculptures come to life.

"Art invokes emotion," Boyce says of his work. "It makes you feel things you weren't even aware of. It reaches inside the shell we all put up to keep the world out, and it touches something."

To showcase his work, he opened Artistry in Bronze gallery and sculpture garden in a refurbished warehouse near the Reno-Tahoe Airport. Conceived as a public space where everyone is welcome, the garden features life-sized sculptures of deer and sheep, and a fountain adorned with a bear swiping a paw at the water for fish.