David Buckingham b. 1958

David Buckingham (b. 1958) lives and works in Los Angeles, California, and is a sculptor working exclusively in found metal. All colors are original as found; no works are painted. He roams the high and low deserts of California in search of battered and beaten agriculture equipment, trucks, school buses, looking for metal that has had a previous life, with the scars to prove it, much like himself.

Buckingham finds inspiration in American pop culture, filtered through his “own admittedly skewed perspective”. He worked as an advertising writer for 20 years, so pieces incorporate text work, wordplay, movie references, slang, and more. Like metal, words are malleable; bending and reshaping them can give them a completely different meaning.

Educated at Loyola University in New Orleans and the Riverside School in New York City, Buckingham’s work has been on exhibition across California, in Berlin, Chicago, London, New Orleans and now Aspen.

He considers his work “unserious” but himself serious about the work.