Richard Beaulieu

Neighborhood Gallery showcases local artists

Boynton Beach Community News August, 2000

Neighborhood Gallery
showcases local artists

By Shirley Green
Special to the Community News

It starts out as a bar of cold hard steel, and ends up as a tall, graceful sculpture reminiscent of colorful hair ribbons tossed in the wind. Richard Beau Lieu, 50, award-winning sculptor creates art from interesting materials like steel.

He comes by his love of steel naturally. "My family was in the steel industry for 100 years, so I'm at home around metal," he said. " I apprenticed at a bronze foundry, and I do bronzes as well. But I really prefer steel, first, because I like its availability, second, because I prefer doing the whole thing myself without having to contract with a foundry. This way I'm in control of the whole project, and I don't have to depend on anyone else to make it happen."

But the real reason he prefers working in steel is"... because I can build things as big as I want." Like his sculpture 'Liberty,' for example, which stands an imposing 40 feet tall and weighs seven and a half tons.