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Jim
Racchi’s work has a broad scope and his ability at executing a variety of styles
is well developed. Some of his pieces are more traditional, like his nudes,
which hint to his education of stone carving in Florence, Italy, while under
scholarship from the Cleveland Institute of Art where he was a sculpture major
in 1987 and had worked primarily in wood.
In other works he gets
playful, creating snarling dogs, spinning houses caught up in tornados and
ABSTRACT expressions that don’t rely on anything traditional but still work on
their own. His move to Key West, Florida in 1990 prompted new techniques in
welding steel. Collecting scrap metal from dumps and old construction sites
proved an inexpensive and inspirational source of material. Friend and renowned
metal sculptor Cynthia Wynn calls Jim a “scrap metal genius.”
Jim’s
ability to execute a likeness of his subjects was realized under the instruction
of Nathaniel Kaz at a Florida Keys Community College workshop in 1992. Heavy
metal is transformed into work that looks as light and full as the herons, dogs
and humans they portray by using lines of steel as if he were sketching a figure
with a pencil— shaping and reshaping the lines until the fullness and contour of
the figure is fleshed out and familiar.
In 1993, Jim taught Metal
Sculpture at Florida Keys Community College. His work was further developed by
his introduction to traditional blacksmithing in 1995 when he began work as a
Park Ranger at Fort Zachary Taylor State Historic Site in Key West, Florida.
He is the creator of Sculpture Key West, an outdoor sculpture exhibition at
Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and other island garden venues, which feature his
own large scale pieces as well as the work of several other artist from around
the world. The successful exhibition in 1995 has become an annual international
event lasting six weeks and providing outdoor and site-specific works to an
enthusiastic Key West audience of locals and visitors alike.
Jim’s
studio is located on Stock Island, and he is currently represented by Stone Soup
Gallery in Key West.