Artists of Note | Toney Redman

An inescapable mystique

Toney Redman, Red Tail Hawk Kachina, steel/copper, 30 x 33 x 2.

This story was featured in the July 2016 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art July 2016 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Since he was a child, Toney Redman has been creating things. “I have always had a shop,” he says. When he was young, that “shop” was a desk in his room. During the years Redman work-ed in other careers, including military service and four decades as a trial attorney, he tinkered in his wood shop turning out furniture. In 2005, following a natural inclination, he began working in steel. “I’ve never been a welder or anything,” he says. “But I bought a welding machine and just started doing it.” And while creating with this new material, he learned just how malleable it was. “I realized that with a texturing hammer and a plasma cutter, I could make a piece of steel look like rough bark, or I could forge and shape it to look like an antler or horn,” he says. “So I started adding the textures and patinas to wall sculptures.”

As Redman continued to refine his creative work, he retired from law and threw himself wholly into art. “It’s like starting an entirely new life,” he says. “I am now able to serve a passion I only patronized before. What a great challenge.”

Although he began with abstract wall hangings, the artist currently focuses on masks, wrought in copper and steel, representing Native American kachinas, and each piece he makes is unique. “I like history, and I have always had an attraction to the Southwest culture and heritage. It’s so vibrant, and it still survives. There’s a kind of inescapable mystique—the legacy of the ancients.” —Laura Rintala

Redman’s work is available at www.toneyredman.com.

Photos by John Nollendorfs.