Aerodreams sculptures are produced entirely by hand by Brad Story, using carved wood, molded veneers and fiberglass, epoxy, metals, found objects, acrylic paints, and lacquer. Each piece is unique and is the result of hundreds of hours of work. Most are quite large - 5' to 7' wingspans - and are meant to hang as if in flight. Some are smaller and a few are standing or tabletop pieces. Brad has produced over 60 pieces in the 7 years he has been actively sculpting. Many of these can be seen on this website.

Brad Story is a native of Essex, Massachusetts and a seventh-generation boatbuilder. He has always been fascinated with flight and wingéd things and has been modeling and sculpting all his life.

He grew up around the family shipyard, sailing, biking, and walking near the salt marshes, and lives on the Essex River estuary now.

Red-tailed hawks, ducks, crows, owls, kingfishers, great blue heron, egrets, and glossy ibis are regular visitors.

At Kenyon College in the late '60s, where Brad earned a Phi Beta Kappa majoring in art, he began to sculpt the human form, and for the next decade his sculptures and reliefs were mostly of faces or human torsos. In his spare time he learned to fly a Piper Cub on an Ohio grass airfield.

After a few years working as a carpenter in the midwest and western Massachusetts, Brad came back to Essex to build boats at his family's shipyard. (Most of the sculpture from this early period ended up in the woodstove.)

In his 27 year career as a boatbuilder, Brad built over 50 boats, ranging from small, experimental skiffs or daysailers to a 55' jet-drive power yacht and many traditional lobsterboats. All were made of wood or wood combined with various composite materials.

The knowledge of working in wood and materials such as epoxy and fiberglass that Brad gained as a boatbuilder is now directed towards his current sculpture. His many years of experience in "sculpting" beautiful boats, his life-long delight in looking at planes, learning how they are built and how they fly, and his fondness for the neighborhood birds all seem to have come together in these pieces.

Some are clearly more plane than bird, integrating engines, landing gear, and ailerons with avian forms and spirits; others seem more firmly linked to nature. These aerodreams, like those we dream at night, arise from both the concrete and the symbolic.

The wing tips of the red-tailed hawk who nests near Brad's studio are magically incorporated into a fixed-wing aircraft.

The experimental aircraft with the canard wing that Brad sees at an airshow transforms itself into a genial duck, in a word-play on its name.

Although some pieces are essentially abstract - capturing Brad's consideration of a theoretical aspect of flight - these also sport realistic details which are wry comments on actual planes or birds.

Some dreams reoccur until the message is clear to the dreamer. Likewise, Brad Story's sculpure builds on repeating themes, threaded throughout his work:

* the mutability of perceived boundaries;

* the principles of real-world aerodynamics;

* variations on designs found in nature;

* a vision of underlying structure (skeleton, airframe, keel and ribs) as the essence of the beauty of an object and the value of a design; and

* a sensual delight in sweeping, curving, rounded, and elegant shapes.

As an avid armchair aviation buff, Brad has always been fascinated with the odd, one-of-a-kind planes - the experiments that proved a fundamental or radical new idea, but were never mass-produced. He especially admires those who made the creative leap to design such experiments and takes great pleasure in making his own musings three-dimensional.

Recently, he has begun to add hand-worked metal components to his art, has started experimenting with outdoor pieces, and is beginning to use the engineering and rigging experience he gained in the shipyard to build and install large sculpture for institutions and public spaces such as airports.

Brad Story's Artwork ranges in price
from $1,800 to $2,700

Visit Brad Story's website