Concrete has become synonymous with its massive brute presence. It takes a committed artist to tease grace and beauty from its strength. It’s all in a day’s work for Trent Hutton, the British Columbia-based artist behind Wavestone Sculpture, a boutique studio specializing in public art, play structures and rock habitat environments for public institutions, corporations and private clients around the word.
Hutton began sculpting for a commercial studio in Toronto. He later moved to the Lower Mainland where he began to specialize in artificial rockwork using concrete. He founded Wavestone on Bowen Island about 15 years ago.
“I was primarily creating custom rockwork such as retaining walls, cliffs and waterfalls,” says Hutton. “It’s a specialized form of sculpture because you’re not just recreating natural rock, but replicating specific types of rock—most commonly granite and basalt in British Columbia. The client typically wants to replicate the rock already found in the area. I built an amazing oceanfront indoor grotto at a private residence in the Grand Cayman Islands to replicate local limestone.”
He’s produced rock sculptures for clients including the Telus World of Science, Vancouver International Airport, and the Vancouver Aquarium.
Among his other projects; public art; play sculptures; zoo and aquarium habitats; spa and pool rocks; retaining walls and public furniture.
While his projects are occasionally fashioned in the studio, 90 per cent of the work is completed on site, simply because it’s integral to the location where it’s installed.
Hutton works primarily in concrete applied over geotechnical foam using a selection of hand tools. The work is almost universally sculpted and rarely cast.
“When I think of casting, I think of chocolate or gold,” he says. “It’s such a different process from carving and sculpting by hand. I don’t like to cast concrete because most of my work is original and not designed to be replicated.”
One of his most unusual private projects is a literal “man cave.” It’s a media room in a private residence in Langley.
“It was the owner’s dream to create a home theatre that looked like an underground cavern,” he says. “It was built complete with lanterns, coal mine carts, timber supports and a wine cave cellar. The rock walls had resin dinosaur skulls imbedded in them.”
He also sculpted a series of concrete trees displayed at B.C. House at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
But Hutton’s greatest love is now public art.
His first public art project was TransLake, a 21-foot concrete sculpture featuring a frog emerging from the water. Completed in 2016, the sculpture sits outside the Lafarge Lake-Douglas transit station in Coquitlam, part of Metro Vancouver’s SkyTrain system.
“Lafarge Lake was a gravel quarry that was once owned by Lafarge, a manufacturer of concrete, and given to the town in the 1980s,” says Hutton. “It’s now transformed into parkland and home to many species of wildlife. The emerging frog represents metamorphosis — the transformation of industrial lands back to something green. It’s a great story that inspired the project.”
Hutton worked on the sculpture for more than 120 hours. He says he not only enjoyed producing the work, he’s inspired by watching people interact with it. Climbing on the sculpture is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged.
His most recent commission is the Horse and Foal Play Sculpture, which received its official opening in May 2018 at Burke Mountain Pioneer Park in Coquitlam.
“The park wanted a unique piece of play equipment that wasn’t made of typical fibreglass or plastic,” he says. “I designed it to be safe for play by softening and curving the edges and setting it in a resilient rubber floor. The project is a new concept for play equipment and definitely part of the direction in which I want to take the company.”
Although he occasionally hires from a select group of freelance artists to assist with large projects, he prefers to create most of the work himself.
“I don’t want to have the work created by someone else in my name,” Hutton says. “I want to be the artist — to keep on the tools, sculpting and doing the fun stuff.”
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