Gravity and Grace
Maine sculptor Benjamin Pochurek shapes wood and steel into figures built to carry hope forward.
Benjamin Pochurek grew up on a Florida cattle ranch and conservation property, before finding his way to Freeport, Maine. A self-taught sculptor and welder, Benjamin works where craft meets conscience. His work returns to a single, resonant moment—the lone figure leaning toward a better future amid war, climate change, and unequal access to education or the vote.
In small shifts of weight and quiet gestures, wood and steel soften; humanness shows through the seams. In his climate-themed Flora Lung, he even introduced a living air plant—"It was the first time I've ever incorporated something alive into my art."
Beginnings and Belonging
Maine opened the door to materials and mentors. What started with cardboard and a hot glue gun quickly turned to solder, then to welding. In workshops and garages, Benjamin found the language of joints and seams, the way heat can turn cold metal pliant.
He also found a welcoming community.
Encouraged by local artists including Matt Barter and his father, the late Philip Barter, Benjamin honed a visual vocabulary where mechanics suggest motion, and every surface bears the memory of touch. "They've both been huge inspirations," Benjamin says of the Barters.
Themes of Care
Many of Benjamin’s sculptures cradle something fragile—an idea, a future, a living thing. His work imagines the body as both shield and bridge, a witness to struggle and a vessel for hope.
The figures are simplified yet specific: arched backs, braced arms, heads bowed in concentration. A hand becomes a shelter. A welded plate reads like armor that has already seen the storm.
In 2022, his sculpture Flora Lung was selected for the Portland Museum of Art’s Tidal Shift Award, honoring youth artists engaging climate solutions. Earlier, his Climate Change Indicator #14: Tarpon Season Opens in Maine won The Nature Conservancy and Maine Public’s “Age of Nature” award. It later found a public home in Freeport.
Benjamin’s practice also spans play and pedagogy—he designs wooden robot toys, BENAbots, for children—and natural history, including a prehistoric woolly mammoth sculpture acquired by a Florida museum.
"I decided to do something a little bit more personal, a little bit more individual."
Benjamin has recently focused his efforts on "Nosey," a 10-foot-tall animatronic rabbit that has gone viral on social media.
Witness and Response
Benjamin engages world events with clear-eyed empathy.
Defender, a sculpture created in response to the war in Ukraine, honors resilience by depicting a figure protecting a symbolic flower. The piece, which drew the attention of the Portland Press Herald, reflects his belief that art can insist on dignity without shying away from pain.
Another work commissioned by Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment celebrates pathfinding in sustainable farming, while a third, Pull, explores the tension of opposing forces and the human capacity to realign them.
These pieces share a choreography of care: bodies leaned over what matters most, pulling toward center, bracing against collapse. Through engineered joints, visible fasteners, and the suggestion of springs or cogs, his sculptures hint at motion even when they are perfectly still.
"I try to create some sort of... illusion this could stand up and walk away."
Material, Method, Mindset
A graduate of the Waynflete School in Portland, Benjamin is now in college, majoring in studio art with a minor in Russian. When he isn’t training as a student pilot, he turns to the piano, letting rhythm inform the next weld. He often works to music, letting rhythm guide repetition while staying alert to the alchemy of heat and pressure.
Wood and metal are not easy partners; welding near sawdust is its own kind of risk. Benjamin treats process as practice—precision, patience, and the presence it takes to bring a figure together without losing its spirit.
Learning to fly has shaped his outlook as much as art. The studio becomes a cockpit of sorts: instruments, checklists, muscle memory, and the steady attention required to keep something airborne. Sky and ground trade places; lift contends with gravity as risk yields to trust.
That sensibility appears in the sculptures as lightness inside weight, as if the next breath could set them moving.
Explore More
Discover Benjamin Pochurek, a Maine sculptor whose welded figures hold space for vulnerability, courage, and renewal.
See his past work at the Portland Art Gallery online. While his college studies haven’t created space for new work in the gallery, we’re hopeful to have new sculptures in the future.
Watch the Interview
Hear Benjamin discuss materials, mentorship, and meaning on Radio Maine with Dr. Lisa Belisle.