♪ >> Just outside of Columbus, artist and retired teacher Robert Pulley has created a world of his own.

These mischievous sculptures are meant to mimic the qualities of cast metal and stone.

>> They are an illusion, the way a painting is an illusion.

When I was a kid, we lived at the edge of town, and I loved hiking along the creeks.

There would be trees growing out of cracks in the bluffs.

You'd climb up into the rocks, and there's this layering of this -- of this sedimentary stone.

So I was interested in stone and sedimentary stone and glacial stone and some -- showing a sense of time, maybe loss.

I just think of that as power and energy.

>> He achieves that sense of power by building these sculptures from many layers of delicate clay.

>> So I like to use the qualities of clay, sometimes to move me in different directions.

Lots of improvisation and sketchbooks.

I have vague ideas of proportion I'm after, or some kind of a formal quality that I'm looking for, and I just do thumbnail sketches.

>> From there, he fleshes out these forms in different materials, sometimes clay, and sometimes Styrofoam.

>> And I can sit there, take my little box in while I'm watching TV and make a big mess.

When I come up with something that I like, I dip it in wax.

And I can leave the wax just as kind of like a unifier.

I'll do a lot of these.

When I'm working on making models, I'll make six or eight times what I might ever actually build.

Part of it is, I just really like clay.

I like when you are stretching this clay and it's opening up.

It's using the same thing as plate tectonic, you know, the way it responds to your touch.

And I like the way I work on multiple pieces over time.

♪ I will just demonstrate how this works a little bit.

I will start with this fatter coil -- or this coil.

I leave it to strengthen this segment I will be building.

>> As his work grew in size, he developed new techniques to bring them to life.

To create these large public scale works, he not only builds them in layers, but also crafts them out of smaller, modular pieces.

>> The blocks are -- the blocks are kind of determined by the sculpture, the structure of the sculpture, but they're also determined by what I think I can handle.

The stoning is -- even though it's an illusion, this is just clay.

I wouldn't recommend that other people go out and try to make 10-foot pieces of clay sculpture, but it's worked for me.

>> Like any good artist, he takes inspiration wherever he finds it, even if it's from one of his students.

>> He had this little vase for me.

It was very nice.

I said, well, you are supposed to have done a play decoration area.

He says, that's okay, Mr.

Pulley.

I'll take care of it.

So he added this texture on the side, that he put on when it was dry.

And I thought, oh, I never thought of working with the clay after it was leather hard.

This texture, I've been using a lot.

I like it as a contrast to the other textures.

It just looks like stone that has been fractured off, and it adds a nice contrast.

>> And while he might have picked up a few tricks from his students, he hopes to have left them with a lifelong love of art.

>> I taught art in various elementary schools for 18 years.

Then I went to the high school for 13 years.

I was wanting them to explore their own ideas and to have a lot of freedom.

My strong point, I think, was just trying to show them what art was as a -- as an exploration.

>> One of the things that drew Pulley to Columbus in the first place was the city's profound commitment to architecture that engages the community.

>> The built world impacts people.

Their environment impacts them, whether they know it or not, and that was what I was thinking was happening in Columbus, that they were going with that assumption, that architecture had power.

There's certainly been people that I've met here that have been important to my life and important to bounce ideas off of and see -- just kind of share the experience.

The best work goes off to shows, and then at some point, they're just displaced by new work, and it settles down out here.

My wife and I have lived on this piece of property for 40 years now.

So the environment you see around us, all the sculpture has been out and come back and rests here.

It's just been a little sanctuary, and it's kind of grown with us.

>> And as his sculpture garden grows, so too does the artist.

Pulley continues to explore new techniques and find the rugged beauty of nature layer by layer in the clay.