From iron to ice cream, Sean Monaghan apparently likes things that are moldable. As a student at UC Santa Cruz he pursued art after taking a foundry (bronze casting) class, which he now himself teaches. After graduating college, he and a friend first started up their own café downtown Santa Cruz that specialized in gelato, and eventually establishing a chain with cafés in Tokyo as well--allowing him to travel to Japan and Italy (to try some authentic gelato of course). Traveling provided him with experiences that would later have a great influence upon his work. For example, his famous octopus fountain on the wharf is representative of his travels between Santa Cruz, Tokyo, and Italy since octopuses can be found at all three of these locations

After getting his Master’s Degree at San Jose State he founded Bronze Works - the oldest and only bronze foundry in Santa Cruz. Currently he is working on a project for the Evergreen Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in California. It used to have a Chinese section with beautiful wooden headstones with calligraphy painted on in ink but has since disappeared due to their inability to last the time and weather. Thanks to someone stealing one of these headstones to use as part of their tree fort some time ago, this headstone has been preserved and we now know what these old headstones used to look like and how they were formatted so they can be imitated in the restoration of this section of the cemetery. Monaghan is also currently working on making a stainless steel support for one of the oldest headstones in the cemetery that happened to break so that it will be able to last longer and be more durable.

Monaghan enjoys working in the overlap between mass production and making one-of-a-kind items by hand. A lot of his work resembles the Industrial Revolution, as he is fascinated with the irony of the age where people used their hands and very few mechanical tools to create these machines and inventions that would soon lead to mass production. He also admits that Santa Cruz has a huge impact upon his work, saying, “I consciously try to be original, but we’re all influenced by what we see and what we’re exposed to in our environment.” He loves being surrounded by such an artistic community with so many creative folks that it’s impossible for them to not have an effect on his work.

Monaghan is currently getting plans and sketches ready for his new sculpture that will be installed in the big planter box by New Leaf in downtown Santa Cruz very soon. He is planning on doing a fairly large bronze piece that follows along with a series of work he’s been doing with vessels/container forms. He not only wants it to be something that relates to the foundation of the work he’s been doing, but also something that represents the heart of the work he’s been exploring. After doing this for 23 years, we can only expect Monaghan to create something bold and original once again for this new sculpture.