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Artist or Scientist? Both

You’d know it as marble, but Bob Sievers sometimes refers to his preferred raw material by another name: calcium carbonate. That happens when the sculptor is also a research chemist.

“My science has informed my art, and my art has informed my science, ” said Sievers, a ����ֱ�� chemistry professor who took up sculpting in the 1980s as a diversion from academic and entrepreneurial life. (He’s also formed two biotechnology firms and served as a ����ֱ�� regent.)

In 1990 Sievers purchased 35,000 pounds of marble from Missouri and shipped it to Boulder on an 18-wheeler. He’s been chipping away at it ever since. In all, he’s produced 55 sculptures.

“I could do more if I did smaller things,” he said. “But I like to do life-size pieces.”

Besides human forms — a ballerina’s leg, say, or a nun — he favors natural phenomena as subjects: Owls, flowers, dolphins, buffalo, salt crystals seen under a scanning electron microscope.

Sievers has sold or donated many works, some decidedly abstract, some in alabaster, acrylic glass or bronze. All four ����ֱ�� campuses have at least one. Several are on display at ����ֱ�� Boulder, including his favorite, “Calla Lily,” pictured above. 

Photos by Glenn Asakawa