Meet Sutton Betti

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sutton Betti.

Sutton, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in an artistic family and began drawing very early in life. I was heavily influenced by my uncle who would draw caricatures at the local county fair when he was in high school, as well as fill up his sketchbooks with these really wacky caricatures of people. I don’t know when it was that I started imitating his sketchbook drawings but they played a very big part of my childhood. To this day, he is a big inspiration to me and we have maintained a close bond.

As a young adult, I attended a few junior colleges in northern and southern California never really knowing what I wanted to do until my uncle mentioned the Academy of Art College in San Francisco (now the Academy of Art University). It was my first AHA moment. I immediately signed up, packed up what little I had and moved to San Francisco. It was the mid 90’s and San Francisco was still somewhat affordable to live. I majored in character animation, but my goal was to be a Disney animator through their ABC program (animation boot camp). Disney feature animation, as well as other departments of Disney, visited the school every spring looking for young talent who knew anatomy and life drawing as well as had strong skills with painting and sculpture that they could train to be an animator. For three years I focused on being good enough to be one of the “lucky” ones to be hired. I attended life drawing workshops 6 days a week, in addition to my full time schedule. Class sessions included visiting day cares to draw children, zoos, SFSU to study the dead bodies, as well as studio painting, drawing, sculpture. I spend 9 hours a day 6 days/week at the academy and on my time off I went to Legion of Honor art museum on a monthly basis and the zoo on Sundays. It was a very thorough artistic education and I experienced the most growth as an artist in those three years than at any point in my life.

Although I was one of a few students from the Academy that Disney invited to apply, in the end I didn’t get hired and ended up dropping out of the Academy.

After art school, I started working as an animator for a small animation company before getting a job as a sculptors assistant which inspired me to pursue sculpture as a business. California wasn’t offering enough opportunities for sculpture so I left and moved to Loveland. After a few more years of scraping by I finally got a large public art commission for Boulder City, Nevada in 2009. This was something similar to a big break that you hear about in the music business, although on a much smaller scale. It did, however, give me the credibility I needed to receiver other large projects.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Not at all. It’s been a rough road for sure. In my opinion, sculpture is one of the hardest professions in the arts. It’s costly, labor intensive and requires space to get messy and make mistakes and you don’t really get good at it until you do these things. If you want to be a sculptor you have to be a little crazy. My own journey has been rough, but probably similar to other sculptors. I have lived in a garage with no plumbing for several years and struggled to find my voice as an artist. I’ve never really held a job and have racked up a lot of debt early on without the means of paying it off. But all the while I kept chipping away. It took me about 10 years of living like this. I was really fortunate that I’ve been supported by my family and friends during these tough times. I think they just felt sorry for me though. I didn’t have much anything else going for me, plus I was stubborn. When you have a few options all you can do is go for it.

Tell us more about the business.
I’m a bronze sculptor and I specialize in life size bronze monuments. Much of what I do is either military, historical or sports themed. I’m probably most known for my over life size bronze statue of FO Stanley in front of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. This was a collaborative piece with a friend of mine Dan Glanz.

What a lot of people don’t know is that I also sculpt happy garden elves and fairies for fun. I keep this part of my business as word of mouth and don’t do advertising or internet/website.

There are quite a few projects that I’m most proud of but I’d have to say that making the many life size bronze sculptures for American Veterans Park in Nebraska is probably highest on my list. It is a large project that I was fortunate to be commissioned for and has given a boost to my sculpture business.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I live by the rule: the harder you work the luckier you get. I think that maybe there are two ways of looking at luck; from your own POV and other peoples POV. From my point of view, hard work brought on the good luck. I know that this hard work prepared me. To an outsider’s point of view, it’s easy to just say “he got lucky” because they don’t see the blood sweat and tears behind it all.

Contact Info:

• Address: 2347 W 8th street
  Loveland, CO 80537
• Website: www.suttonbetti.com

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