We search in the arts not simply for signs of skill, which are, if not easily taught, still teachable. We search for the signs of a unique human presence.
Adam Gopnik, The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery
It would be difficult to overestimate Alexa King’s reputation in the sculpture world and, specifically, in the arena of equine arts. Visitors to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, are immediately confronted with a larger-than-life representation of its history and purpose. At the behest of its owners, Alexa created a 125 percent scale representation of the great stallion Barbaro flying along the rail with rider Edgar Prado, all four feet suspended above the ground. Cast in bronze, it’s a tour de force of illusion. The horse appears to be floating without support, a veritable act of magic due to hidden supports extending from the rail to the body of the horse.
On the Churchill Downs website, Alexa is identified as a Kentucky artist, but she in fact resides and works in Springdale Township, approximately six miles west of Verona. Her outsized renown in the art world may escape many locals. Some may be familiar with her sculptural work on display at the entrance to the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, but they’re likely unfamiliar with the vast scope of Alexa’s accomplishments.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, a hierarchy of worthy art subjects evolved, placing history painting—the depiction of grand historical events or conflicts—at the pinnacle followed by religious subjects, portraiture, genre painting (scenes of common life), landscape, and animal painting and still life at the bottom rungs. This conceit was often followed by critics into the 20th century with equine specialists, like George Stubbs and Alfred Munnings, commonly being dismissed as second-level painters due to their choice of subject. Today, with fellow sculptors like Deborah Butterfield, artists of Alexa’s caliber are finally being recognized for their artistic achievements.
In 2006, Gretchen and Roy Jackson brought their colt, Barbaro, to the Kentucky Derby for the first leg of the legendary Triple Crown series. Following five winning performances, Barbaro won the Derby by nearly seven lengths, keeping his unbeaten streak alive. But his next start, at the Preakness Stakes, proved fatal, as he was injured emerging from the starting gates. Despite efforts to save his life, the difficult decision to end his life was made the following year. The Jacksons memorialized their great stallion by commissioning the sculpture by Alexa, which stands at the place of his greatest achievement.
Alexa started her artistic career as a painter, studying at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana, where she was born the daughter of an Army colonel from whom she acquired the peripatetic lifestyle that has seen her living across the country and exhibiting from coast to coast. She has always raised, shown, and even raced horses, including Arabians, Hackney Horses, and Saddlebreds. While raising her children in Scottsdale, Arizona, Alexa shifted to sculpture because “I could always come back to a sculpture. I didn’t have to face the difficulties of a painting drying before I had the opportunity to return to it.”
Largely self-taught, Alexa read every book in the Scottsdale library on sculpture and animal anatomy. Beginning with the human figure as a subject, she quickly shifted to horses. Her initial exhibition success was kindled at a Minneapolis wildlife and western art show, which led to her first major commission—a depiction of the Pony Express for the Nelson A. Rockefeller collection. A succession of galleries led her to working with the Cross Gate Gallery in Louisville, and she now exhibits and fulfills commissions globally.
Alexa’s sculpting method is both exacting and traditional, beginning with a maquette, often one-quarter the intended final size. Alexa creates her sculptures in a porcelain clay body that includes wax and petroleum to ensure the clay doesn’t dry out. She enlarges her initial model over an elaborately engineered steel armature built up with a mixture of aluminum foil and insulating foam to rough out the larger form. Using an enclosing box and utilizing a technique called pointing, she’s able to transpose measurements at an exact proportional scale to her model. This is covered with the clay body, which she’s then able to mold and carve to the desired final form. After completing the sculpting, Alexa calls in professional moldmaker Carla Knight, who in the case of Barbaro cast seventy-five separate piece molds to be shipped to Loveland, Colorado, for final bronze casting. The final sculpture averages one-quarter-inch thick, and the overall weight of Barbaro is over 1,500 pounds.
At the UW School of Veterinary Medicine entrance is another monumental piece: a veterinarian, for which Alexa’s daughter posed, stands in clinical garb tenderly holding a cat while a Jack Russell terrier stands at her feet, attentively looking up. Behind the doctor is a large tondo of bas-relief bronze surrounded by 15 smaller wheels of bronze, reminiscent of a rose window in a cathedral, depicting the multitude of practicing arenas in which the students are trained and researchers are employed, from wildlife rescue to agrarian husbandry. It has a commanding presence while subtly resonating with the sacred depictions of saints and their work.
The true breadth of Alexa’s achievements can be seen in her work across the animal kingdom. For the Birds in Art show at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, she created a bronze figure of a running ostrich that exudes a spontaneous spirit of grace and movement. The triumph of the work, like that of all great artists, is that Alexa celebrates her medium by treating the clay almost as if it were paint, using broad strokes and privileging mass and form over detail.
With regard to her audience, Alexa says, “You have 15 seconds. You have to get them with the language they understand.” For Alexa King, it’s the language of animation briefly captured in bronze.
