This story is part of Meet the Artists, a series in which we introduce the people behind the work on our walls in Park City and Sun Valley: how they work, what moves them, and how they got here.
“Art is movement. That’s what it is – it’s movement. It’s alive, and it’s always changing.”
Gary Traczyk
A sculpture by Gary Traczyk never quite holds still. Long ribbons of stainless steel, cut, bent and polished by hand, are balanced so precisely that they move and catch the light, and the piece you see is never quite the same twice. On his Instagram profile, the Miami sculptor sums it up in six words: “The Art of Steel in Motion.”
Gary has two callings. In the studio, he is a kinetic stainless steel sculptor whose work has been commissioned and exhibited by galleries, individuals and institutions across the United States and internationally. Away from it, he is a longtime Miami-Dade firefighter-paramedic, serving since 1998. His own site says the two callings, seemingly far apart, serve the same quiet aim: a more beautiful world.
Where it began
Gary was born in 1969 on an Air Force base in Homestead, Florida. When he was seven, his father’s military career took the family to northern Italy for five years. “My father took me to all the museums,” he told Redwood Art Group’s RAVE Miami in a 2020 interview. “I had a very large influence in the arts as a child growing up.” He credits those years, much of them spent exploring Venetian museums, for his early interest in art.
Back in Florida he was accepted to the New World School of the Arts conservatory in Miami (“I was involved in theater,” he told RAVE), then studied Renaissance art in Florence, Italy, through a Florida State University program. He also earned two bachelor’s degrees at FSU, in finance and multinational business, with a minor in art. Steel came through apprenticeships with veteran sculptors: he got into stainless steel, as he told RAVE, “from a friend’s father that I worked with for a few months in the summer,” and long admired the moving and metal sculpture of Alexander Calder, George Rickey and José de Rivera.
“I loved that steel sculpture could look simple and clean, but that it’s complex and difficult to make.”
Gary Traczyk
“I loved the challenge,” he adds. He set up his own studio in 1997, within a year of his first experience with the material.
Steel between shifts
Shortly after college, Gary entered the fire academy in Ocala, Florida. His father, his uncle and his godfather had all served as firefighters. “I was around it my whole life, with my dad,” he says. “So when I became a part of it, I felt like it was family.” He went on to join Miami-Dade County’s Fire Rescue service, where he has served since 1998.
The schedule left room for the studio. “I’m off 20 days a month to mess around with art, and that’s kind of how I evolved as an artist,” he told RAVE. Between shifts he quietly worked on his sculpture, and only after four years of practice did he feel the work was ready to show. In 1999 it caught the attention of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (now the YoungArts Foundation), which invited him, alongside the well-known sculptors John Henry and Albert Paley, to donate a piece to a benefit auction. It drew a flurry of bids, raising money for young artists. “I was kind of shocked,” he recalls on his website. “And I started to feel like I really had something.”
Since then his sculptures have been shown at art fairs including Art Basel Miami Arts Week, Art Hamptons in New York, SOFA Chicago and Art Santa Fe, and he has collaborated with the Brazilian pop artist Romero Britto.
How he works
Gary starts with plain stainless steel bars. “They don’t start out shiny. So this is all marine-grade stainless steel,” he told WSPA 7 in 2024. He cuts, grinds, sands, polishes and bends them into fluid geometric forms; his site describes the result as dull raw steel transformed into “brilliant, precision-balanced geometric forms.” Shaping the metal is physical work. It often takes found objects, a tree stump, a chair or a concrete block, used as a form to bend against, and, in his site’s words, “total physical exertion.”
Balance is the heart of it. Each piece sits on a pin bearing, and Gary balances it by trial and error, shaving and grinding the metal until he finds a true center point. The result is balanced so precisely that, once set in motion, it keeps turning for several minutes, with no motor and no wind behind it. The finish matters too: his pieces combine polished and brushed stainless steel, so as the steel moves it reflects the room around it.
He usually works on pure intuition, and insists he doesn’t draw. A custom commission, his studio notes, generally takes several months to complete.
The ideas behind the works
Each of Gary’s sculptures at GAIA carries a short statement in his own words.
Spirit. “The ethereal and nonphysical part of each one of us which does not reside in the body. In essence, that which continues on after.”
Infinity. “This form is inspired by the concept of continuation. In reference to a Mobius Strip, there is no beginning and no end.”
Seascape. “In the vast expanse of the ocean there are nuanced and small movements that accumulate to form large waves of energy.”
Orbit. “There will always be an inertia drawing near, a law of attraction that cannot be denied.”
Art that gives back
From that first benefit auction on, giving has been part of Gary’s work. He has donated sculptures to causes including the National Breast Cancer Foundation, the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, Autism Speaks, Operation Smile and the YoungArts Foundation, and he visits schools across South Florida. In 2020 he was chosen to create the prize sculptures for the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education, awarded by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
One piece he made for the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency honored a close friend who had received five organ transplants. It was an open heart, and he worked on it “for 16 hours straight,” he told RAVE. “Any angle you look at that sculpture, you’re going to be able to see a reflection of yourself,” he said. The piece is a nod to a motto he has carried since his martial-arts training at FSU: “I always say that’s an open heart, open mind and open arms to everyone.”
Gary Traczyk’s work at GAIA
These kinetic sculptures by Gary are available through both of our galleries. Each one is an original, and the way the steel moves and catches the light is something a photograph can’t really show. See them in person at either gallery.
Stainless steel, kinetic sculpture
Available through both of our galleries.
Stainless steel, kinetic sculpture
Available through both of our galleries.
Stainless steel, kinetic sculpture
Available through both of our galleries.
Stainless steel, kinetic sculpture
Available through both of our galleries.
See all of Gary Traczyk’s work →
From a Miami fire station to the mountains of Utah and Idaho: every one of Gary’s works at GAIA is available through both of our galleries. Come and see them in person. Plan your visit →
Questions about a piece? Contact us at either of our galleries: Park City 435-731-8376 · Sun Valley 208-973-0137 · Contact us online →
Available through both of our galleries
Gaia on Main, 314 Main Street, Park City, Utah
Gaia Sun Valley, 659 Sun Valley Road, Ketchum, Idaho
Sources
- Gary Traczyk Sculpture, home page
- Gary Traczyk Sculpture, “About Gary”
- Gary Traczyk Sculpture, Blog (October–November 2020 posts)
- Instagram, @kineticsteel (profile)
- Shoutout Miami, interview with Gary Traczyk (October 12, 2022)
- HGTV, “That’s Clever” segment on Gary Traczyk
- Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education, About
- Redwood Art Group, “RAVE Miami: Gary Traczyk, Spotlight Artist Interview” (December 5, 2020)
- WSPA 7 News, interview with Gary Traczyk (May 10, 2024), reposted on Instagram @kineticsteel
- GAIA, Gary Traczyk collection