Garden & Gun

Bronze Menagerie

Working in his one-man studio in Ijamsville, Maryland, the acclaimed sporting sculptor Walter Matia is surrounded by putty knives, loop cutters, and other tools of his trade. Nooks brim with maquettes (scale models) of shorebirds, foxes, and raccoons. What’s missing? Any view of the actual great outdoors.

Amid the clutter there are elements of the natural world to which Matia sometimes refers, from dried cattails to a freezer containing specimens of bobwhite quail and pintail ducks. And should he desire a muse while

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