Lesh built the striking sculpture for display at Burning Man, and stopped in Loveland to show it off before heading to the Nevada desert.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/RHC-L-SculptureShow2-js-0808.jpg\")
The eye and the detail work of artist Clinton Lesh’s stainless steel woolly mammoth sculpture is pictured Wednesday at Benson Sculpture Park as artists and volunteers prepare for this weekend’s Sculpture in the Park show and sale in Loveland. (Jenny Sparks\/Loveland Reporter-Herald)<\/p>\n
\u201cBurning Man has a theme every year, and this year it\u2019s \u2018future today,\u2019\u201d Lesh said, explaining his sculpture\u2019s title. \u201cSo it\u2019s supposed to be a futuristic world fair situation. I had heard that they\u2019re cloning mammoths. So in the next 10 years or so, they\u2019re gonna have baby mammoths running around. \u2026 So mammoths are an ancient animal, and they\u2019re futuristic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lesh grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana and originally planned to follow in his family\u2019s footsteps. But during his senior year of college at Montana State, he broke the news to his father that his true passions lie in art.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said \u2018you\u2019ve got to do what makes you happy,\u2019\u201d Lesh said. \u201cNow he loves it. He\u2019s bought a few sculptures from me and at the beginning, he was my biggest patron.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now based in Bozeman, Lesh works primarily in steel, creating bold, large- and small-scale pieces informed by his rural upbringing.<\/p>\n
Sculpture in the Park wasn\u2019t initially on Lesh\u2019s radar until he talked to Amanda Markel, another Bozeman-based artist whose sculpture Ridge Runners was installed in Benson Park last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI asked her, \u2018What\u2019s the best show you\u2019ve been to?\u2019 and she said, \u2018the Loveland Sculpture in the Park show,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cSo I applied and got in.\u201d<\/p>\n Lesh will be joined this year by 167 other artists at the show, 32 of them newcomers like he is. Together, they will fill Benson Sculpture Garden with thousands of pieces in bronze, stone, wood, glass, ceramic and mixed media.<\/p>\n Hosted by the High Plains Arts Council, the juried event is now in its fifth decade and is recognized as the largest outdoor sculpture show of its kind in the country.\u00a0 By the time it is over on Sunday, thousands of visitors will have passed through the gates, while spending around $1.5 million on tickets and art purchases.\u00a0 Proceeds from the show will then be used to acquire new sculptures for Benson Park.<\/p>\n Visitors returning to the show will notice a few changes to the show\u2019s layout, said HPAC Executive Director Jade Windell. The annual silent auction has gone digital, allowing people to bid from home instead of having to attend the event in person all weekend.<\/p>\n Organizers have also moved the \u201cTake Home a Piece of the Park\u201d program, which sells smaller works by park artists, to its own tent for the first time, a move organizers hope will attract more participating artists.<\/p>\n After the show, select items from the program will be sold year-round through the Visit Loveland gift shop, Windell said.<\/p>\n Sculpture in the Park runs 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday at Benson Sculpture Garden, 2908 Aspen Dr.<\/p>\n Admission is $10 for adults, with children 14 and younger admitted free. Tickets are available at the gate, and parking with free shuttle service will be offered at Loveland High School, 920 W. 29th St. For more information or to purchase tickets in advance, visit sculptureinthepark.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benson Sculpture Garden was a blur of activity Wednesday morning, as dozens of volunteers and artists hurried from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,51307,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-71312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-benson-sculpture-garden-sculpture-in-the-park-loveland-high-plains-arts-council","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}