Mr toad lucky Sculpture

Hello everyone my name is Ryan Micheal, I come from a musical and artistic family. I grew up in Southern California playing sports and spent most of my adalecence enjoying the local beaches surfing and skate boarding. Art has always bin in my life as long as I can remember. But around 15 yrs old when I first met my good friend and mentor Paul Basenberg is when I started to really enjoy the passion and love of art. Paul new from a young age that he would change peoples life’s forever threw art and that teaching art was the reason he was out here on earth. Paul passed away in 2017 but not before he made his impact and met all the goals he said he would. He was a high school art teacher and excellent artist and a great person. He was only 39 yrs old when he passed. But his art work and lives that he touched will live on forever. He loved soccer Paul my cousin and I would play soccer for hrs.when I moved into my first apartment I didn’t have money to buy much of anything for the apartment and Paul came over with a truck load of his personal paintings and said I will help you with decorating the walls I said ok I would like to put a couple of you don’t mind. He laughed with a smirk and said no you can have all 15 of them that’s why I brought them.all the hrs he had painting these pieces and he just gave them to me to put a smile on my face and help a friend. I had the coolest apartment a 18 yr old could ask for. Paul went to collage and soon became a high school art teacher which they still give a grant to help with college tuition for art students that qualify in his name every year. He would say the study of art can never be wrong it’s freedom of expression and it’s so powerful in so many ways. I started metal sculpting and fabricating in 1998 and after a three yr apprenticeship with Los Angeles Ironworkers local 433 structural steel Ironworkers I started my life’s work becoming a sculpture with metal. My works include Disney concert hall , Disneyland, manhatton beach hotel, the sculpture called the cloud in front of fashion show mall in Las Vegas and dozens more. But now I am opening a new artistic way and making sculptures without steel or alloys. And that’s what I am displaying to the world. Which will only consist of a total of 39 pieces to celebrate the wonderful yrs Paul was here on earth. So grab a piece of art and celebrate a piece of art that represents a artist that was larger then life.