Heart of Iron
Jenny Horstman creates sculptures from discarded metal By Nancy Johnson ost people look at a pile of discarded iron pieces and see junk. Jenny Horstman sees a horse. “I find pieces that have a great shape; that I am attracted to,” she says. “It could be a manure spreader auger, a spring, or a little drill bit. And then it just kind of happens on its own.” Perhaps her most impressive pieces are life-size sculptures crafted from reclaimed metal. “I have two horses under my apple tree on my little
want you to see the scraps. For some people it’s maybe more about the shape of the scraps, but for me, I draw with the steel. I use it as negative space and positive, but you need a lot of it. Because what isn’t there is just as important as what is there,” she explains.
farm, it’s the perfect place for them,” she says. Jenny, an amateur event rider who winters in Aiken with her horse Roan Rooster, lives most of the year in Fort Ann, New York, about 45 minutes north of Saratoga. But you don’t have to go to upstate New York to see her spectacular iron horses; just take a stroll down Hayne Avenue in Aiken, where you can’t miss one of Jenny’s majestic equine sculptures in the window of Haus Studio. “When we first opened in December we had one of Jenny’s life-size horses on the sidewalk in front of the studio,” says Christina Neuhaus Thieme, who is the owner and designer at Haus studio, a new interior design firm. “People were constantly outside admiring it, taking photos of themselves with it and quite frankly in awe of its beauty. It’s just so intricate and interesting with all of the parts and pieces within the sculpture. Most can be recognized by horse people, and for non horse people it is so much fun to explain it to them – chains from manure spreaders, horseshoes, tractor parts, farrier tools, and so on. I also will explain to admirers the years it took from concept to completion and how much love went into it. Jenny’s sculptures are like her children and she has a story to tell about each of them. I am very honored to have her work at the studio. It’s truly outstanding.” It’s true that a project like one of Jenny’s life-size horses can easily take close to a year to complete. “You have to sift through so many items to find the exact right piece because I really want you to see a horse; I don’t
Gallop Farm, a professional eventing facility in Aiken owned by Lara Anderson. “I met Lara through friends and this is the second year that my horse and I have stayed at Full Gallop Farm. When I first told her I welded and made sculpture, she immediately offered me this big, old welding shop to work in. It’s so generous of her, but I don’t want to fill it up with all the pieces I collect and sift through for my sculptures of reclaimed metal. The sheet metal ones don’t take up nearly as much space and people really like these mid-sized sculptures,” she explains. A number of the horsehead sculptures, slightly smaller than life-size and each a bit different, are mounted on metal bases in the Aiken workshop. “It’s something people can find room for somewhere in their home,” Jenny says, adding, “I price them all at the same very reasonable price. It pays for my time and material and it’s an affordable way for quite a few people to have a really nice piece of art.” Growing up in an artistic family in the Adirondacks, Jenny determined early on that she wanted to be an artist. “I always carried around a sketch book and did a lot of drawing and some painting,” she says. When she was 15, Jenny fell in love with sculpture. With support from her mother, who pushed the school to allow a female to do so, she began taking welding in vocational school and made sculptures out of sheet metal. “They looked just like these,” she says indicating several stunning horsehead pieces in her Aiken workshop.
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The Aiken Horse
Winters in Aiken
Jenny has made a lot of smaller pieces as well, including many sheet metal horseheads that she crafted over the winter in a studio at Full
April-May 2020
