As a boy, artist Lance Marshall Boen can remember fly fishing with his father and grandfather near the family cabin at the foothills of Mount Baldy in Southern California. Early on summer mornings, he’d take his hand-tied flies and hike to a familiar creek, where the 4,200-foot elevation and climate of the San Gabriel Mountains allowed for year-round fishing. Boen would catch his own trout at just 12 years old; usually for the family’s breakfast, but on other occasions, he’d release the fish into a pond in his front yard to watch them grow over time. For the young Boen, these colorful, wondrous creatures were larger than life.

“It was a beautiful place to explore. I always either had my fishing rod or my BB gun out there as a kid,” Boen recalls. “The area was only a short drive away, about an hour east of Los Angeles, but an amazing escape.”

More than three decades later, Boen has built a career of recreating the magic he felt experiencing nature during his youth—by bringing to life imaginative and tremendous (and tremendously-sized) sculptures of fish and assorted wildlife. Using heavyweight leather as his medium, he molds complex nature scenes, arranging trout and tarpon in various tableaus to showcase the aquatic creatures as well as to tell a unique story.

Predictably, this has attracted customers in Hawai‘i.

“A lot of times, collectors have already seen my work when they approach me for a commission. I ask about the certain type of fish they enjoy catching, if there was a particular trip that was meaningful to them, and, generally, what gets them excited about going out on the water again,” says Boen. “This way, the final piece isn’t just a fish on the wall. There’s a personal connection, and they get to share the story behind this piece of art with visitors and friends. The collectors become involved in the creation process.”

It’s a creative approach that could only have been developed over a lifetime of experience as both a sportsman and craftsman. Boen had a passion for creating art since before high school; he attended the University of La Verne and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with an emphasis on painting. “In college, I started incorporating sewing and some assemblage, and my paintings became more structural. They literally began coming off the wall, so to speak,” Boen says.

When he finished graduate school at Claremont Graduate University, he had a Master’s of Fine Arts in sculpture. The artwork he began producing—conceptual pieces made with sewn leather, resin and found objects—quickly attracted spots in gallery shows and museum exhibits throughout California. Meanwhile, Boen would use any leftover leather to create three-dimensional fish for fun and as gifts for friends. He reconnected with the local fishing community in Carmel—as well as his own fishing roots—and began crafting sculptures inspired by his and collectors’ tales of being in nature.

“A lot of my inspiration comes from spending time on the water,” says Boen. “When I’m fishing, I’m observing, looking for imagery to add onto the surfaces of my fish. I like to create a lot of movement and action within the images and patterns themselves.” For one particular sculpture of a sailfish, Boen illustrated a mahimahi catching a flying fish mid-flight, inspired by a similar scene he had witnessed on a recent trip to Mexico.

In other sculptures, Boen might incorporate the images of regional birdlife found in that particular fish’s habitat or even the fish’s natural predators, to help share the narrative of the fish’s unique life cycle.

To create each sculpture, Boen begins by tooling intricate patterns, such as scales, decorative accents, or even images of other marine life, onto large swathes of wet leather. He adds color and complexity when the leather dries by painting the surface using acrylic paints or dyeing the leather with natural earth tones. All the while, Boen keeps an eye on his work to make sure his painted strips are still in proper proportions to ensure anatomically correct fish, which he shapes using an industrial sewing machine. It’s a process that requires manufacturing know-how
as much as it does delicate artistry, as Boen carves, paints, sews, and rivets his creations to life. Often, he’s as likely to visit an antiques dealer as much as he is to the art store.

“On some pieces, I’ll repurpose old leather items, like western saddles and horse straps, and work them in. If there’s something nice about the way a vintage piece of equipment looks, I’ll add it into the sculpture,” Boen says. “Maybe a used pack becomes a river rock, or cut-up pieces of a saddle become lilypads. I’m always scouring and inventorying parts from here and there for when inspiration hits.” Boen recalls creating one sculpture, of a slightly larger than life-sized buffalo, made entirely out of vintage baseball gloves. For a whimsical piece, the artist placed a miniature horse saddle, complete with a tiny pistol holster, on a 6-foot-long rainbow trout.

“I might make a tropical fish—like the humuhumunukunukuapua‘a—but have it be three feet long, something really fun,” says Boen. “I want to give viewers the most exciting art experience possible, and for them to see these pieces and explore the imagery. I’ve always loved the mysterious underwater world of fish and I want to share that through these pieces.”