Athletes Made of Junk
Daphne, Alabama
Bruce Larsen was 20 when he saw the film Alien and thought he'd like a career making movie monsters. He got sidetracked in the 1980s as an airbrush artist at the Jersey Shore, painting fantasy images on surfboards. Then he moved to Alabama and finally established himself as a respected professional sculptor of junk art.
Ten of his sculptures are permanently displayed on the grounds of the United States Sports Academy in Daphne. Each depicts a different sport, and most are tributes to individuals: "Arnold the Weightlifter," "Nastia the Gymnast," "Jordan the Basketball Player."
In 2010 Larsen unveiled "The Iron Bowl," commemorating the rivalry between the University of Alabama and Auburn University football teams. It's only two players, but there was talk at the time of adding more and making it a huge artwork. That hasn't happened.
Instead, Larsen has continually added new, different sculptures to the display, built out of welded assemblies of outboard motors, rusted motorcycles, tractor parts, drainage pipes, propane tanks, grates, gears, and scrap metal. Larson's athlete sculptures express dramatic positions of human flexibility and motion, in a skeletal and biomechanical style that would not seem at all alien aboard the starfreighter Nostromo.