The Performer
Maker Faire Bay Area 2026
September 25th-27th
Entertaining the crowd, Bay Area artist Jeff Owen’s whimsical sculpture of a figure juggling brings playfulness to Mare Island’s waterfront promenade.
Artist’s Statement:
“The Performer” began as a rare Friday evening sketch - a departure from my usual process of creating without a preliminary plan. Though I hesitated to commit to the piece initially, once I began, I couldn’t stop. I typically work quickly to “release” a sculpture from within, but the methodical process of assembling this lifesized form, one irregular shard of steel at a time, proved to be a wonderful new experience. To me, this figure is a mirror: it is the part of us that stands tall, the part that dares to be seen, and the quiet courage we carry through the long journey of becoming.
My technique is instinctual and uncompromising - brute force guided by decisions made in the moment. My creative process reveals itself through patterns. Pattern is the language that runs through all of my sculpture. I begin with a single piece of steel, adding to it or carving away from it, allowing the work to evolve until it fully embodies my creative energy. When that energy is alive and flowing, I work relentlessly toward completion. A sculpture is finished not by a plan, but by the moment the creative force subsides.
I have been an artist my entire life. My fascination with engineering and architecture informs everything I create. The shapes of metal - its patterns, textures, and grain - compel me to explore their potential. Through cutting and welding, I am free to shape steel into whatever form my vision demands. My aspiration is to create sculpture that is truly singular - work that has not existed before.
I resist conformity and reject mass production. My art is as individual and uncompromised as I am. My work belongs to the present, the future, or any time at all. It does not imitate reality or reference the external world. Instead, it draws from relationships between forms and patterns that exist independently - what I describe as contemporary abstraction.
I find deep satisfaction wandering through metal scrap yards, searching for discarded pieces of steel that speak to me. I feel a connection to inanimate objects. When I encounter something cast aside, I ask why. I wonder it was used for and where it might have been.
Every piece of metal carries its own story. Was it once part of a bridge, bearing travelers toward distant places? Was it part of a water tower, sustaining gardens below? Was it used to manufacture other objects like itself?
Once I rescue that piece from limbo, it may take moments - or months - for me to understand what it wants, or needs, to become.
Only then can I fulfill its dream.
Jeff Owen
My artists life began as a child sitting in the back seat of a 1957 Chevrolet with a drawing tablet – only the best from the art store – and my favorite #2 pencil. My mother would throw me and all of her drawing supplies into the car and drive all around town looking for interesting buildings, homes, or people to draw. Always on a busy street, cars whizzing by with all the noise that accompanies them; no matter, we were there to draw whatever was out the side window of the car. I’d say my drawings were never much to look at, but I always received tons of “that’s beautiful” or “I wish I could draw like that” from Mom. Sometimes my scale would be off, sometimes my perspective, no problem, Mom encouraged me. Each adventure would top the last – and each finishing with a quick roll up of the window, a buckle of the seatbelt, and a retreat to home where mom would pull out her recent work and “touch up” her drawing – then – she begin to paint. This was the best time. The fumes of oil and turpentine would fill the house. We, my sister and I, would run over and open a window to get some fresh air into the room – Mom was painting! We would watch her paint, and then, for some unknown reason (except for being a kid) we’d find something else to do – until our curiosity sparked us to again go and see how far she had come with her latest “masterpiece.” This was my introduction to art. My art evolved over the years, sometimes taken with painting, sometimes drawing, until that one special day that I discovered welding. My father-in-law, Chet Christison, lived in Fresno. We would visit him and his wife Thelma at least three or four times per year. His workshop, a huge outbuilding on the property, was filled with woodworking tools. Little did I know that he also loved metal. Inside his workshop, in a corner that you could barely get to without disturbing all the feral cats he loved so much, away from everything else, was an oxy-acetylene torch set, and next to it, a small welder. “What the heck is this?” I asked him. “Oh that, you wouldn’t know” he said. “That’s for welding metal.” I asked him if he wanted it, since I could see it had not been used in some time. “What are you going to do with it? You don’t even know how to use it.” I finally got him to give it to me. The welder went into the back of my truck, along with the oxy set. I was determined to put them to good use. I must be able to find something that needs welding.
Local Edition Creative Showcase Maker
Now in its 6th year, the annual exhibition showcases captivating temporary sculptures and artworks that are freely accessible to the public on the historic grounds of Mare Island.
