“All I wanted was a pony,” Ann Malphrus reveals as she reflects on her childhood growing up in the Parkins Mill neighborhood of Greenville. She was one of the lucky ones of the countless little girls who share this dream. When she was seven, her parents surprised her with a pony named Stardust.
Dusty, as Ann called her pony, instilled in the young girl a passion for horses. So, it’s no surprise that her early talent for art eventually manifested itself in equine sculpture. The first sculptures she did were at Beck Elementary, where her art teacher, Bill Marshall, recognized her talent for 3D art. “Sculpture comes naturally to me,” says the now veterinarian and part-time sculptor. “I see things in 3D.” She doesn’t start with a drawing, only a vision in her mind, and the clay springs to life in her hands.
Standing in her kitchen, Ann points out a bronze sculpture of Stardust titled “Dusty Dreams,” displayed on her dining room table. In fact, the name of her art studio, Dusty Bronze, is a tribute to her first pony. The sculpture, depicting Dusty standing with his head bowed and a rope halter hanging from his neck—a reference to the rope her father held the pony with when he presented it to her—won an American Academy of Equine Artists award in 2018.
Competing with horses is where Ann headed after high school, but after a few years of that, she enrolled at the University of Georgia where she intended to major in art but ended up in veterinary school. “I really wanted to be a horse sculptor,” she says, “but I realized at some point that I’d need to finance my art . . .” So, she took a different tack and became a vet. It was a natural vocation for a woman who grew up with dogs, cats, and horses. “My dad was a big outdoorsman,” Ann recalls. “We were always out in the woods and the creek learning about nature as young children.”
She graduated from veterinary school at the University of Georgia in 1986, and eventually started her own practice, North Greenville Animal Hospital. As her busy schedule left her little time to devote to art, she would sculpt from 5 to 6:30 a.m., before she left for work.
Her studio occupies a small bedroom upstairs, where her pieces take shape in oil-based clay before they are sent to the foundry to be cast in bronze. Working in oil-based clay means her sculptures never dry out, giving her the flexibility to work on them as her schedule permits. “There are no mistakes,” she explains. “If tomorrow I look at a sculpture and I don’t like it, I can easily change it because the clay is soft.”
Her sculptures start with a pliable metal armature, which is mounted on a stand. As she builds the figures by placing globs of clay on the wire “skeleton,” she uses instruments such as knitting needles, saws, cake-decorating combs, and dental tools to refine the piece. To complement her first-hand knowledge of equine anatomy, she references the 3D “sketches” and anatomical resin models called écorchés on nearby shelves as studies for the horse’s musculature.
In preparation for retiring at the end of this year, Ann recently sold her practice to Southern Veterinary Partners and reined in her hours to three days a week. She’s looking forward to spending more time creating, branching out into mixed-media pieces and even producing a line of pet sympathy cards.
No matter the medium, for this artist, every work tells a story. During the first class she took in equine sculpting, she produced a piece called “Escape.” When it was finished, one of her classmates looked at it and exclaimed, “That horse is you!” “It never occurred to me,” Ann admits, “but that horse was exactly how I was feeling then. I was angry about being at the office all the time and wanting to get away. And this horse was backing up with his ears back. From then on, every piece I’ve done has some story related to my emotions or something that’s happening in my life.”
A life that has galloped away with art.
Find Ann’s sculptures online at dustybronzefineart.com
From Clay to Cast Bronze
In creating a sculpture, Ann’s clay model is only half the story. After she completes a piece in clay, she takes it to a foundry in Atlanta or Seagrove, North Carolina, to be cast—a pricey process that can take from three to six months. There, it is coated in silicon to make a mold. Next, they pour wax into the mold to produce a wax model, which is encased in layers of sand. “When they pour the hot metal into the sand-encased wax model, the wax flows out and you end up with a metal positive,” Ann explains. She goes back to the foundry several times to check the wax model and the metal cast for imperfections, and finally to choose the patina. To complete the process, a chemical patina is brushed on and heated to produce the desired color, and the finished piece is sealed with a coating of wax.
Want to own one?
Sculptures range in price from $3,000 to around $7,000.
Want to try it?
Get your hands in the clay at these Upstate studios:
Hollowed Earth Pottery; hollowedearthpottery.com, 864.757.2097
Greenville Center for Creative Arts; artcentergeenville.org/classes, 864.735.3948
The Art Haven; thearthaven.org; 864.395.6946
