- Jack Dowd is a connoisseur of American types, the boisterous, eccentric, innocently hilarious individuals who rarely become the subject of art.

Dowd celebrates America's idiosyncratic extended family in his ongoing series of full-size figures with affectionate humor and satiric wit.

(upbeat music) (door crackling) (upbeat music) - I am Jack Dowd and I consider myself a visual artist of course, for the past 50 years, I enjoy the most doing life-sized sculptures of people.

And on the side I do a lot of painting myself.

This is my "Mad Max" character inspired by the movies.

This guy's missing a pin in his ear.

Mad Max.

Mad Max.

Well, I got serious during the 50 years, but it started well before that in my youth, eight, nine, 10-years-old, when the family would come over on the weekends and play cards and I would walk around the table and sketch their faces and I would get all kinds of great vibrations from them.

So they kind of got me started.

This was a Marquette.

The idea of doing him 18 inches tall and without a base, it was just gonna be a sample for the larger one I was gonna do.

But when people came into my studio and liked it so much, they wanted this size for their home, not something so big that it would dominate.

So I never really got around to doing the life-size Lenin.

And I pursued this and had a mold made and refined it and then I build the bases and do the music.

And the pictures of the pictures come from a book of a friend that I met in New York City who was a very good friend of John Lennon's and followed him around and photographed him.

So all these pictures are from that particular book that I was able to put plus the music of his famous song, "Imagine" on his bass.

So this is said, I'm touching it up for a show and it will be there.

(soft music) - Jack Dowd is an amazing sculpture.

In fact, we've sold dozens of his Andy pieces, lots of his lithographs and pastels.

He's just an amazing, quite different sculpture.

In fact, I'll be honest with you, I only sell one sculpture to maybe every 100 paintings.

So I'm really very limited as to who I choose to represent the sculptures of my galley and Jack Dowd is certainly the number one fellow that we represent.

(upbeat music) - [Jack] In the '60s, when I was a school teacher, an art teacher, I met a guy who was doing chainsaw sculptures on the street.

And I was very interested in what he was doing.

He was taking large pieces of wood and cutting them down with a chainsaw.

So as the years progressed, I got into doing what they called chainsaw art.

And I would go out on the street with a big log and take my chainsaw and do a figure out of that.

So that got me started with the life size figurative work that I now do, but much more detailed and much more credible.

(upbeat music) - I think that Jack Dowd is so hot in the art market for one simple reason, he represents true Americana from Andy Warhol, to the badass motorcycles, to the old fellas standing outside their camper.

Jack Dowd is the quintessential essence of the Artist of America today.

(upbeat music) - These I love because I was able to incorporate my sketches, my prior sketches, as you can see, of the different butlers that I've done.

These are the Marquettes and they also are sellable.

So I decided to have him cast my very favorite.

This was another one I like, but this is the wine steward and he's been very popular.

- One of the other interesting things about Jack Dowd is the reaction we get when people see his works.

A good example is when they see Andy Warhol life-size, Andy yellow or blue.

What's amazing is that the people first think that they were done by Andy Warhol, but no, it's Jack Dowd who made these wonderful sculptures, and so we have to correct them on that.

But it's wonderful because it just shows you that he can convey many other famous artists' feelings in his works.

- My work reflects the world I live in and the people that surround me, and I use that as my inspiration.

I walk around Walmart or the streets of Sarasota, or when I'm up in Vermont and I meet people and I see things and boom, there's an idea.

So it's out there and I have nothing better to do than to recreate what I see and the life I live.

(upbeat music) I encourage any artist who's getting started to get out on the street with their work.

What a lot of my success stem from doing sidewalk art shows.

Coconut Grove, Fort Lauderdale, Miami Beach, New York City, Central Park.

I did all those shows.

I met so many wonderful people, made so many great contacts, sold a lot of work on the street.

This is back in the chains between the chainsaw days and when I was coming to the more realistic work.

And it was just so much fun.

You meet other artists, you meet people that buy and at some point they're gonna say, you need to be in a gallery.

We need to represent you, and so on.

So you have to start at the bottom.

And I did.

Good luck.

(upbeat music) - [Host] To learn more, visit jackdowd.com and artavenueflorida.com.