Laughing Buddha Outdoor Sculpture

“Can there not be beauty and utility, as there are in fortresses and in men?” Leonardo DaVinci, Codex Atlanticus. My sculptures strive to embody beauty applied to life, expressing art with function. I am Bob Flagg, a U.S. artist born in 1953, raised in Boston, MA and currently living in Rhode Island. Particularly influenced by the artistic styles of impressionism, neoimpressionism, post modernism, didacticism, surrealism, and realism. Inspired by the works of Sylvia Shaw Judson, Alberto Giacometti, Jessica Stoller, Jeff Koons, Scott Burton, Cajsa von Zeipel, Genesis Belanger, and Richard Sera. The outdoor sculptures you see here are created using traditional and novel sculpting techniques and materials. All sculptures constructed using non-metallic cement composites and unless otherwise noted, are solid-colored, not painted or stained. Typically, five sculpting methods - casting, modeling, carving, assembling, surface decoration - are used to create each statue. More environmentally friendly and lighter weight, the sculptures contain recycled plastics and a fraction of the cement used in traditional concrete statues. The sculptures are expected to survive average outdoor environments, including freeze/thaw, for 100 years, perhaps up to 200 years.