By Ed Symkus

The 77-year-old Brookline sculptor has been exploring many sides of his chosen craft since his days as a senior at Harvard. And he was already dabbling in all sorts artistic endeavors long before that.

Murray Dewart is one of those creative folks who had explored working in many mediums and with numerous materials before settling in one steady — but still always changing — direction. In high school, he was into model kits; at prep school, he took to painting; as a sophomore in college, he tried writing a novel; when he was a senior, he turned to sculpting. And is still at it. But Dewart never stopped searching for new ways to approach his craft. He started with wood, moved on to metal, then to stone, and eventually found ways to combine different materials into single pieces.

Depending on how his artistic juices flow, or on what people who commission his works request, Dewart’s sculptures have ranged in size from fitting comfortably on living room mantelpieces to looming skyward in outdoor settings.

Dewart is a founding member of Boston Sculptors Gallery, which got its start at a church in Newton in the early ’90s, and moved to Boston’s South End in 2004. His solo show Numinous is currently running at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave., Boston, through Dec. 8. An artist reception is scheduled for Nov. 16, 2 – 5 p.m., and artist Meet + Greets are set for Nov. 24 and 30, and Dec. 1. The gallery is open Wednesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

I recently visited and chatted with Dewart at his Brookline studio.

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The Arts Fuse: Let’s start with your early days, when you and your high school friends were making model cars from kits.

Murray Dewart: That was the thing to do when we were looking at hot rods. We made models, focusing on WWII airplanes and battleships. I was born in ’47, and there was this postwar moment — you memorize all the airplanes — the B24, the B17. You’re working through what everybody just went through. We’re boomers!

AF: So, you took to working with your hands?

Dewart: Yeah. I learned really early that I enjoyed working with my hands.

AF: Yet when you were at Milton Academy, you thought you might become a painter.

Dewart: It wasn’t that I wanted to be a painter; there was a great teacher there, Richard Bassett, the head of the art department. One of the best people on the faculty. He was a painter, and he taught this course. I’d never had a particular interest in painting. My father and grandmother and I would go out and do watercolors. But Bassett was like, “Make a set of paintings!” He’d get these big sheets of cardboard and say, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” It’s [the title of a] Gauguin. I was a teenager at that point, and to ask that to a teenager … it was, whoa! It was big! I loved it.

AF: Tell me a little about your attempt at writing a novel.

Dewart: I had invited John Updike to come to Milton Academy. I was editor of the school magazine. If I was going to write, I would be using that template: You use your life, your girlfriends, the stories. Later on, I started to do that in this novel, but somehow it felt too profane. It felt that I was using my life, in all its tawdry details (laughs). So, I let go of it. I have no copy of it.

AF: During your senior year at Harvard, you met Will Reimann, which led to your interest in sculpture. What happened there?

Dewart: He was at the Carpenter Center at Harvard. I was in crisis. This was 1969. I was gonna lose my student deferment in eight months. Then I wandered into his class. He’s a talkative, burly, Yale-educated man. He had a wife, who was a painter. And he had two kids and a dog, and he rode his bike. And he wasn’t a crazy artist! I saw that he had made a career as a sculptor, and he was a good teacher. His work really did not interest me. But the process of making sculpture — of using your hands — this is a medium that’s an important one. You’re not making postcards, you’re not doing graphic design for an advertising company.

AF: You’ve produced so many pieces in so many different sizes. When do you know to go big? When do you know to go small?

Dewart: Sometimes the material will tell you. I carved wood for 20 years. Some of them were big. I did The Iliad and The Odyssey in wood. And they were seven feet tall. I did the pulpit at St. Paul’s Church. Then I had a big commission for First Night. Mayor Flynn and [Office of Business and Cultural Development director] Rosie Sansone loved horses. I put together a proposal for a 30-foot horse. They liked it, and I built it — a Pegasus of steel and wood. It was on the Boston Common for a month. At the end of the month, the material was all mine — wood and steel. I tried to sell the sculpture to racetracks. Meadowlands wanted two of them — 40 feet high — but that didn’t happen. Eventually I made a 20-foot one in steel that’s in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Then I had a show at Boston Sculptors, and I thought I’d use the Pegasus. I cut it up — all of that wood and steel — and I made five sculptures, and sold them all. It was a big breakthrough for me. I was no longer doing figurative narrative carvings.… I was making assemblages.

AF: You’ve become well known for working with stone. How did you make that leap?

Dewart: I’d been making sculptures with bronze and wood and steel. Kingsbury Browne was a wonderful Boston lawyer and a patron of mine. He said, “Mac, would you make me a granite sculpture?” And I said, “King, you know, I’ve never used granite.” He told me to think about it. And I did. And that’s how it started. I made a sculpture for him, and then Forest Hills Cemetery commissioned one like it that was larger. I’m open to these things that come over the transom.

AF: You have 25 pieces in the Boston Sculptors show. Are they all new works?

Dewart: Yes, they’re new works. Actually, I’m a little self-conscious about including two pieces from 1973 because they feel out of a different universe. Christmas Bombing of Hanoi and Isaiah’s Double Action. They were once wood carvings, they’re now bronze.

AF: Have you ever managed to come up with a way to describe exactly what you’re doing, what you’re trying to get across, with your art?

Dewart: I feel that we are the least able to talk about our own work. I try … but I cannot really turn my own sculptures into words.

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Ed Symkus is a Boston native and Emerson College graduate. He went to Woodstock, interviewed Amanda Palmer, Dan Hicks, Colin Farrell, and George Romero, and has visited the Outer Hebrides, the Lofoten Islands, Anglesey, Mykonos, Nantucket, the Azores, Catalina, Kangaroo Island, Capri, and the Isle of Wight with his wife Lisa.