The man behind MSU’s new flower sculptures

Amid the construction on campus over the summer, a series of sculptures made out of stop signs, diesel fuel tanks and license plates popped up around campus. These new art pieces span from the west entrance of the Student Wellness Center (SWC) to the top of the hill near the Strand Union Building (SUB).

The artist behind the statues — 60-year-old Dana Bryan Kuglin — was born and raised in Great Falls and graduated from MSU in 1990. Today, he lives in Utah. Kuglin was commissioned by MSU this past summer to create sculptures that highlight the nature found around Montana.

Kuglin said his time spent enrolled at MSU was not perfect. “One of my sculpture professors told me how I’d never amount to anything,” he said. According to him, even after he later befriended this professor, those words served as motivation for the rest of his life.

“There alone is the reason those flowers are on that campus,” he said. “I’m the type of person where [if] you tell me I can't do something, I’m going to show you you're wrong.”

Like many students, Kuglin went through several stages of self-discovery while attending MSU. He started as a chemical engineering student, switched to marketing and ultimately graduated with a degree in graphic design.

After graduating, Kuglin moved to Hawai’i with his wife, where he said he found an abundance of inspiration. "[Snorkeling] is how most of my imagery came around,” he said. “[We] hated humans because you just couldn’t get away from them, so we’d start snorkeling on our day off and we’d just go and float around the water.”

Today, his work is commission-based. He often creates large cast bronze sculptures and three-dimensional designs that can be seen around Bozeman as well as Salt Lake City, Utah. For the sculptures on MSU’s campus, Kuglin used recycled materials to craft sculptures of flowers found around Montana.

“[All my work] is nature's adaptation to man's management of the environment — and mostly that's mismanagement,” he said. “All the stuff [is] reused materials coming from Montana — mostly Montana rivers but a few wrecking yards — things I’ve grabbed all around.”

According to Kuglin, the collection of sculptures serves as a biography of his life and a love letter to Montana's natural resources.

Kuglin explained that the works are deliberately placed around campus, intended to mirror the natural distribution of the flowers in cardinal directions as they are most commonly found throughout the state.

The statue located furthest east and closest to the SUB is a gumbo lily bloom, often found in Eastern Montana. Kuglin made this work out of an old diesel fuel tank. By the under-construction nursing education building, he sculpted a glacier lily on the hood of a car taken from Stacey’s Old Faithful Bar in Gallatin Gateway. The bitterroot flower — Montana’s state flower — is featured in the same display and includes fire suppression parts.

The fourth flower statue, an Indian paintbrush, will be put up later this week.

“The flowers are big because when you go out in the wilderness, you don't look at the flowers per se, you walk right by them,” he said. “And then you see a piece of wildlife — a deer, a moose, a bear if you’re lucky, a wolf if you’re in the right spot — anybody notices that, but they don’t notice the flowers.”

Kuglin said that he hopes MSU’s art students remain diligent in their work.

“It's not hard for artists to make art; it's hard for artists to be a business and that's something I learned over time,” he said. “Your story has to be supported by your work; otherwise, people aren't listening to you.”

Kuglin said he doesn't have a favorite of the sculptures he's created on campus. “You asked me, what's my favorite [piece]?” he said. “The next one.”

To see more of Kuglin’s art, visit his Instagram, @dbkart.