Miner and His Burro Sculpture
Click to watch an interview with Dee Clements
Colorado artist Dee Clements wanted his bronze sculpture called "Miner and His Burro" to represent a story of what life was like in the early days of Black Hawk. The City of Black Hawk is a historic mining settlement founded in 1859 during the Colorado Gold Rush, so the characters in Clements’ piece would have been typical for this area. Clements said, “When you are working on a sculpture, you are thinking about what you’re trying to capture. Those were really tough people, they were mountain men and life was rugged.” Prior to sculpting, Clements served in the Army as a helicopter pilot. He estimates that during his work as an artist, he's created about 300 sculptures in representational bronze, many of them historic in nature.