About us
“I choose bronze as my media of expression because it has the exceptional qualities of high detail, flexibility, and longevity. Bronze art has withstood the test of time for thousands of years.”
Jim learned to take initiative and implement his dreams early on in life. He grew up in the lower-income area of the south side of Chicago, where his father died when he was two months old and his mother passed away when he was nineteen. These experiences taught him he had to go the extra mile and he worked his way through college at Milwaukee School of Engineering. His career in the process control field took him around the US and the world, exposing him to art that would influence his path later.
After winning many awards for his paintings as an amateur, in 1992, Jim left his engineering career to pursue his dream as a full time, fine arts sculptor. He began to be known for his attention to realistic detail in his limited-edition, bronze sculptures, from small to monumental size. Many incorporate water, diverse ethic groups, educational components and/or interactive elements, and some even include fire. His quality of craftsmanship comes from the close focus of sculpting in clay 100% by hand and using live models whenever possible.
Jim and his daughter Christina have worked on various sculptures together for over 30 years and collectively they have over 60 public life-size sculpture installations nationally and internationally. Some of Jim’s works are featured in public collections in:
- The seaside Malecon of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
- Sibelius Museum, Finland
- St. Louis University
- Prestige Development
- Metroplex Telephone Company
- Heathman Lodge
- Bank of America
- Harmony Park
- Boy Scouts of America
- Fort Clatsop National Park
- Na’ Aina Kai Botanical Gardens in Hawaii.
Private collectors include singer Connie Stevens, former Nike president Phil Knight and actors Tom Cruise and Donald Sutherland.
Jim offers inspiration through mentorships, teaching winter sculpting classes and donating fundraising art for various charities, including:
- the former local Camp Opportunity for abused children
- SWIFT
- the Community Foundation of Southwest Washington- Vancouver’s Innovative Services NW for people with disabilities.
- Other causes include orphanages, Boys and Girls Clubs, and animal adoption efforts.
Many of the public, father-daughter sculpture projects involve citizen participation. When statues are sculpted in a public place, school children and community members have the chance to learn about the sculpting process. They are given clay to put on and help create the statues. For example, in downtown Vancouver, Jim and Christina set up a gazebo to allow over 1,300 locals help sculpt the Captain George Vancouver Monument in front of a cinema theater.
Jim, Christina and Jim’s wife Eva worked on a 9/11 Memorial project for thirteen years with the Spirit of America Foundation. The process included numerous trips to New York and Washington DC to procure a metal beam artifact from one of the Trade Center Towers and a limestone facade section from on top of the Pentagon to incorporate in the Memorial. Four bronze figures—representing the various professions affected that day—form a circle. One person is missing, symbolizing those who were never found. The Spirit of America 9/11 Memorial toured the NW part of the US where thousands of people viewed and interacted with it, before being dedicated on September 11, 2015, in Cashmere, Washington, the exact center of the state.
Jim Demetro’s themes are diverse as well – dancers, historical figures, famous people, whimsical sculptures, animals, and children at play. His Native American series includes a whole family of statues, from babies and children to parents and grandparents. These themes represent a diversity of ethnicities and cultures.
Finally, he also has a body of work that specifically emphasizes preserving history through important historic figures in their realm of time and place: Captain George Vancouver, Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark, York, and Native Americans to name a few. He has been previously honored with a half dozen recognitions for his work, including: the 2004 Lake Oswego People’s Choice Award, 2007 Innovative Services NW Caring Hearts Award, the 2008 Puerto Vallarta Special Citizen Appreciation Award and the 2016 Clark County Washington Arts Commission Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the first Cultural Recognition Award, given in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in 2018.
Jim is currently exploring abstract paintings based on cosmic themes, incorporating 3D, mixed-media images.
Hello and thank you for taking an interest. I’m a professional artist who breathes in deep inspiration from the ebb and flow of nature, connections with loved ones, and past challenges to inform my artwork. Many see food as medicine and wilderness as medicine… and I see art as medicine as well. I seek the therapeutic value of it, both for myself and others. That is why—in over three decades of working with bronze and other art forms like wood—I focus mainly on creating fundraising artwork that either adds a twist of meaningful discovery or draws in the viewer interactively. Often I involve the community.
Lately, among other explorations, I have been adding instruments like hang drums and chimes into my artwork as an extra therapeutic, interactive element. Examples of this can be seen in the large art piece titled Song of Hope, where an Alaskan river turns into a large xylophone of chimes. Or The Peace Crane sculpture, where larger-than-normal chimes are incorporated in the sandhill crane’s outstretched wings. It is my hope this will become one of my artistic signatures for larger pieces.
I believe everyone is an artist in some way. My own art exploration began with sculpting realistic, figurative bronzes from 1992 onwards as an apprentice, assistant and, later, co-sculptor with my father, master sculptor Jim Demetro. For my own work, I delved into abstract realism. The goal? Adding something surprising in each of my realistic sculptures, like a semi-hidden message or symbol. After a decade of assistant sculpting, I created my first abstract bronze for a public setting in 2002. I collaborate on bronze sculptures, and have also branched out into woodworking, paintings, luminaries, steel, stainless steel, porcelain enamel-covered-steel art, and bronze pieces of my own. I delight in the fact that many of these metals and natural materials can incorporate interactive elements or instruments.
Whenever I can, I include the public in the co-creation of outdoor sculptures as a type of community-building event. Examples of this include:
1. I included over a thousand participants in 40 classrooms and two public workshops in the towns of Kenai, Soldotna and Sterling, Alaska—where they not only helped co-sculpt but also made their own sculptures and xylophone song compositions.
2. I worked with hospital staff on a healing garden artwork project.
3. In 2017, I involved three schools of elementary and middle school students to help sculpt the six-foot long, bronze Wildheart the Giving Salmon for Homer, AK.
4. The year before that, I co-led, in Anchorage, 94 Boys and Girls Club kids and Wonder Park first graders to help co-sculpt the five-foot high, bronze Whale Song sculpture.
These children—as they ride on the back of the salmon, or swing from the whale’s tail, or play the xylophones in the Peace Crane or Song of Hope sculptures—have the deeper pride of part ownership in these pieces. The largest group I was involved with, when teamed up with my father, had over 1,300 local participants.
Professionally, the art I create also gives back; that is, it supports local fundraisers, or a portion of the profit goes to charity. When this new decade launched with the year 2020 and a pandemic, I felt it was a symbolic year of trying to have the 20/20 eyesight for honing a higher perspective of interconnectedness, as well as the idealistic vision of creating fundraising art in a challenging profession.
At this time, I mainly raise funds for UNICEF. Your artwork purchases help support good causes, as well as hopefully bring happiness to you and yours.
