Time flies for tens of thousands of drivers who travel every day on Route 95 in Providence.

You can't miss the mischievous worker about to roll a clock right off the roof of the former Brown and Sharp manufacturing company.

Foundry Clock Man is just one of the whimsical works of modern metal art, created by contemporary sculptor, Peter Diepenbrock.

- The sort of metaphor of it is why is time so dominating in our lives?

Time is totally dominating.

You think about how we are obsessed with time of day, seasons.

You know, retirement.

There's all these ways of, you know, dividing life up into time chunks.

It's a rejection of that.

(machine whirring) - [Pamela] Diepenbrock constructs most of his stainless steel pieces here in his home studio in Jamestown.

(machine whirring) His is a curiosity shop of fanciful, quirky objects, handcrafted items, as well as many maquettes, artist preliminary models, early editions of his signature time piece included.

Diepenbrock says a friend encouraged him to lean the clock visually.

- With the 12 being at the one o'clock position, just sort of to further emphasize that it's going off the building.

- [Pamela] Diepenbrock says his eye-catching icon is also a tip of the cap, paying tribute to Rhode Island factory workers whose lives were spent clocking in and out.

Like those laborers, Diepenbrock says, his designs are driven by manipulating materials and fabricating them.

- It's the breadth of all that stuff that maybe makes what I do a little bit more unique.

- [Pamela] Unique and playful.

Diepenbrock's recent piece of public art is an almost 10 foot tall rabbit springing to life at the playground on Peace Dale's Village Green.

It was commissioned to commemorate South Kingstown's 300th anniversary.

- The gesture is sort of a skating kind of flying bunny, which is sort of inspiring, hopefully, to young people to kind of live lightly in your own life.

- [Pamela] The sculpture is comprised of some 4,000 pieces of metal, fitted together in organic form.

It's called "Ostara," translation, a celebration of new beginnings.

- Life is so serious right now.

The world is in such crisis, it seems like, everywhere you look, that we could use a little more humor and a little less dark subject matter.

(machine whirring) - [Pamela] When it comes to his artwork, Diepenbrock says repeating metal patterns and shapes is one signature of his industrial design.

Constructing these structures has allowed him to be the architect of his own career.

- There's a way to be a bit of a philosopher, a crafts person, a designer, an engineer, right?

And then a maker.

At the core of it is I love making stuff and so it's kind of like, well, what could I make today?

- [Pamela] A native Californian, Diepenbrock discovered that love of making stuff in his father's workshop at age five and continued here in the ocean state when he graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, in the mid-'80s.

He has been successfully self-employed ever since.

Diepenbrock started in a studio in the old Foundry, building furniture and making sculpture out of recycled material.

Then he scaled down, transitioning to a cottage industry of small metal art, pewter, and cast bronze in what's known as tabletop giftware.

All have humorous personalities, like the dino bite bottle opener.

- Letter opener, candlestick, picture frame, salad servers, centerpieces.

So they all had a function and they were for the most part one piece products.

- [Pamela] And this product by Diepenbrock was used as a prop in the movie plot of "Men in Black."

(character speaking in foreign language) - [Pamela] But in 2002, Diepenbrock's art took a serious turn.

- A friend stopped by and said, "Peter, do you know about the 9/11 memorial competition?"

And I applied to that and won the competition and that is what started the public art practice.

- [Pamela] As you first enter the Rhode Island State House, you passed by Diepenbrock's prestigious commission.

He had only five months to design, create, and install this solemn 9/11 memorial.

It's gold leaf on glass, stark and steeped in symbolism.

- The reference was so 9/11.

So there's nine layers of glass and then the 11 is represented by what looks like the towers, but if you just see them graphically, a 9/11 is embedded three dimensionally.

It was gonna weigh 4,000 pounds and they had to reinforce the structure of the state house from below.

So they had to hire a state, you know, fabricator to come in and build a whole steel armature down below.

It was intense.

I mean, I can't even tell you how intense it was.

- [Pamela] The only project he says may have been more intense?

Getting clock man raised up and bolted down above the Providence skyline.

- This one was 14 holes through brick and granite that had to line up with templates that were gonna be cut out a three quarter inch steel in another state and the parts had to come together and fit.

(bell ringing) - [Pamela] Another of Diepenbrock's heavy metal sculptures can be found on the University of Rhode Island campus.

Torsion III twists like the curl of an ocean wave.

This commission is part of the 1% for public art program, which mandates a portion of all state funding for construction be spent on artwork to create an atmosphere of beauty and citizen pride.

This 14 foot sculpture was installed outside Lipid Hall after an extensive renovation.

Diepenbrock says the accessibility of public art is vital to a community.

- As an artist, it's great to have a work in a museum, but to have it out in the public environment is so much better for the general audience 'cause everybody can see it for free.

It's not intentional to have to go in to see the artwork and so it should enhance the site, make the site more interesting, and it usually provides an opportunity to express some symbolism, some values.

- [Pamela] One of Diepenbrock's recent works is drawing public's eyes in a new direction.

This aerial mobile is the centerpiece of the lobby at Hasbro Children's Hospital.

He calls it abstract construction.

- There's 160 discs of glass, dichroic glass.

There are four sizes and four colors and they shift their color, depending on your view, your angle view.

So the idea was to kind of create this arrangement of floating discs of glass and color that would turn and project those colors all around the room in slow motion.

- Like a rainbow.

- Yeah, or a disco ball, but a little less jazzy.

And the idea being, recognizing that it's a high stress environment, right?

So kids are coming in, they're scared, you know?

Their parents are coming in nervous.

The staff, highly stressed environment.

So I was thinking we need to create something that is calming, that is soothing.

If there's a metaphor there, it would be what would healing look like?

- [Pamela] These days, Diepenbrock says his industrial art concepts aren't so much evolution as experimentation.

- What am I doing?

Well, I'm in my tinker-thinker mode.

- He's been trying his hand at plexiglass kinetics.

How a piece revolves, has motion, movement, and balance.

A work in progress.

- Yeah, I don't think it's working.

(Peter and Pamela laughing) - [Pamela] Outside Diepenbrock's studio are sculptures privately commissioned or just freeform pieces for his own enjoyment, each with a story that can bring a community together and Diepenbrock hopes will surround them for a very long time.

- What I do love about public art as a category is it demands the whole spectrum.

So you have to be able to write about it, you have to be able to speak about it, you have to be able to represent it and model.

You have to transition it, you have to translate it, engineer it, actually build it, deliver it as a complete piece that's gonna last for a couple hundred years.