Crafted from turn-of-the-century barbed wire and scrap steel reclaimed from Routt County ranches, artist Bradley Poissant has created a grizzly bear that stands more than seven feet tall and weighs 700 pounds.

“This one took me three years,” Poissant said of his most recent metal sculpture. “Everything is recycled, except for the base. I bought a good heavy piece of steel for the base, because it had to be strong and it had to be balanced.”

For Poissant, the bear was a work of passion that started with an idea and an image, and slowly took shape over the course of 3,000 hours and more than three years dating back to the height of the pandemic, when Poissant found himself spending much of his time inside.

“This is just stuff that I’ve collected,” Poissant said. “I’m that guy that goes down the road and sees a pile of stuff out in a rancher’s pasture and asks, ‘Hey, what do you do with that stuff?'”

He is also the type of guy that notices the beauty around him, including the wildlife that is so plentiful in Routt County.

Poissant moved to Steamboat Springs from North Dakota 47 years ago when he was laid off from his job as an architectural draftsman for a lumber company. He responded to an advertisement in the Fargo Forum for a job at the Hayden power plant, which was looking for laborers at the time.

“I came down for the interview and started working here,” Poissant recalls. “I got a job pushing a broom and was making more than twice what I was making as a professional, and within months I did move into operations and just worked my way up.”

He met his wife, Linda, after moving to town and the two have been married for 37 years. He spent 14 years working at the Hayden station, and when he wasn’t busy in operations he was given a chance to work in other departments. That’s where he discovered an interest in welding and learned many of the skills that he still uses today.

He said he moved on from the power plant after an injury limited what he could do, and went on to work “here and there, driving shuttles and doing some maintenance work.” He was also able to pursue his passion for woodworking, making specialty items including walking staffs and benches.

“I’ve been doing (metal sculpture) for a while, and I still like to work with wood, I still like to make sawdust,” Poissant said. “It’s fun and I still like to make the benches — they are also my creations.”

However, recently Poissant has turned to working with metal, much of it scrap metal, that he uses to make the work benches and lifts in his shop. The past few years, he has also created more than a dozen artistic sculptures, including the cranes that come back to the area every spring, the eagles he sees plucking trout out of the lakes when he is fishing, or the fox he notices hunting in his yard.

The grizzly bear, he is quick to point out, is not found in our area. He said it is just something that caught his eye and held his passion.

The project started with an image of the bear, followed by research that included the size and standing position, as well as the bear’s mouth and teeth, which are anatomically correct. The work started with collecting the material, followed by the work of making the base and post that anchors the internal structure and gives the bear sculpture its shape. Finishing touches included cutting and twisting the lengths of barbed wire that give the sculpture its life-like appearance. He repositioned the arms three times and created five sets of ears to get the look he wanted.

Poissant’s sculpture is at home in his garage right now, but he is hoping to find a place to show it — whether that is in a studio or his front yard is still to be decided. He sells his art, and some of his work can be seen at UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center and at Steamboat Lake State Park. He can be emailed at blpoissant@yahoo.com.

At this point, he is not sure where the grizzly bear, which he created for himself, will end up.

“I finished this in September, then decided to give my body a break,” Poissant said. “Like all my pieces, I wanted to make it. I made this because I like them.”