Beverly Penn, a Texas-based artist, creates captivating sculptures using an unconventional medium: weeds gathered from the Texas hill country’s roadsides, gardens, and fields. Employing a process known as centrifugal casting, typically used in the jewelry and dental industries for its precision, Penn’s cast-bronze sculptures emerge from a transformative journey. She places the collected plants in a kiln to be burned out, leaving behind intricate molds. Molten bronze is then introduced, filling every nook and
cranny as the molds spin around an axle.
The end result is a series of cast-bronze sculptures that turn ordinary weeds into stunning metallic gardens, which she assembles into 3-D compositions, some spanning up to nine feet across. Her works serve as a powerful commentary on the intricate relationship between nature and culture, exposing the dynamic tensions and harmonies that exist between the two.