Darby Artist Statement
In most of my work, there is a touch of the whimsical. I like my sculptures to elicit a delighted reaction and invite closer examination. Indeed, that is one of many reasons that I chose bronze as a medium. It's history, its depth of beauty and endurance over time make it a medium to be savored. For me, there is an alchemy to the creation of bronze works something magical that happens from the visual concept to the bronze pour. I feel very fortunate to have encountered this medium of artistic expression and to repeat a process so deeply rooted in time and history.

Darby Bio
Darby spent her early professional years in corporate communications and government relations. During this time, she encouraged her children to follow their creative muses and that they have. Her daughter Ianna Nova Frisby became a ceramic artist and art teacher and son Rene' Steinke is a glass blower. Late in her corporate career, Darby realized her enthusiasm for her children's artistic careers were really callings from her own unconscious, one that was never satisfied by corporate culture, nor the highly satisfactory paycheck. At a pause (read, layoff) in her career she picked up a few pounds of clay and began to sculpt.

I was, and am, amazed at how I can take a lump of clay and make it into something animated and beautiful, she says.

Darby has chosen many endearing animals to depict and give, very subtly, an animus. As though they have some human characteristic that reaches out to us, without becoming cartoon characters. Beyond this, she has chosen to sculpt some of the planet's animals who have become endangered because of climate change. Although anatomically correct, her depictions still make that essential human-animal soul connection.

She was particularly flattered when a fellow-artist purchased Devotion- a near life-sized bronze penguin and donated to the Sacramento Zoo as a piece of public art.