Maker Spotlight: Adrian Landon

Name: Adrian Landon
Home: Brooklyn, New York
Day Job: Metal sculptor and fabricator

Metalworking : Sculpture

How’d you get started making? I started metal sculpture about 7 years ago from an urge and curiosity of working the material, welding, and blacksmithing.

What type of maker would you classify yourself as? I am an artist, metal sculptor, mainly self taught, with a taste for mechanics and engineering. I believe in the skills of making and working the material by hand.

What’s your favorite thing you’ve made? One of my favorite sculptures are the Dung Beetles (pictured below). They are giant Dung Beetles one bigger than the other, rolling giant balls of human garbage, street objects, found and fabricated. They tie in the sacred Egyptian meaning of the scarab of rebirth, regeneration, the ultimate recycler, as it procreated through dung, and the environmental disaster that we are creating. The Dung Beetle, an animal of nature, is cleaning up after all our mess and garbage, to regenerate nature and the earth.

What’s something you’d like to make next? I am working on some new abstract pieces after not sculpting for almost a year, and a new mechanical piece, but it’s a surprise.

Any advice for people reading this? I would like everyone to know how important it is to follow your dreams and to find and do what you love. It might not be easy to find it, but there’s something out there for everyone. It is easy to be turned away from it with all kinds of exterior influence, pressure, fear, ridicule, and so on. Listen to your heart. And protect the planet. The time is now to decide whether we destroy our only home or not.

You can find Adrian around the web on
His Website | The Atelier

Every day we highlight a different maker from our broad community. Meet all the amazing people featured in Maker Spotlight. Want to nominate someone, maybe even yourself? Send a note to makerspotlight@makermedia.com.

Thanks Louise Glasgow for nominating Adrian Landon!