"Wendy Klemperer earned a bachelor’s in biochemistry at Harvard before moving to NYC to pursue art full time, earning a B.F.A. in sculpture at Pratt Institute in 1983. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Nelson, NH. To make the sculptures she scavenges scrap yards and construction sites for evocatively shaped pieces of steel, looking for pre-existing lines and shapes with which to draw. Most of the metal is rebar, the reinforcement rod used in buildings, bridges, and highways. Rendered from the concrete for recycling, it comes in a great variety of curves, shapes, and thicknesses. To begin a sculpture, she has an idea of the type of animal it’s going to be, and a rough mental image of the gesture. She sketches loosely, welding steel line to line in the air. Rather than bending every piece, she chooses pre-existing curves and cuts them free from the pile with an oxy-acetylene torch. The arc welder is immediate: she can tack weld a steel line in place and if she doesn’t like it can twist it off easily. Only in the final stage is each section welded thoroughly. Since the sculpture is not a solid form all the connections have to be strong; she spends a lot of time on the final welding to make the piece ready for transportation and installation.”