Fran Jenkins – Exploring Her Love Of Stone & Sculpture

By Doreen Jung, Arts Editor. Intrepid explorer and accomplished sculptor, Fran Jenkins has always been interested in rocks. She remembers starting her first rock collection at the age of five but it wasn’t until the age of 40, than Jenkins began sculpting stone.

It began when a friend had found a beautiful rock and brought it to her. “That was a life changing moment,” recalls Jenkins. “Before that I enjoyed painting but when I began sculpting, it took over my life.” At that time she was living in Revelstoke with nature at her doorstep. “I only did animals that I could see through my windows,” said Jenkins referring to the diverse wildlife in the Selkirk Mountains.

Self-taught in her art, Jenkins is inspired by the forms of the creatures that she creates. “I’ve never had very good eye sight in my whole life,” she explained. “I couldn’t see details. I saw the form of the animal and my eyes got trained to see forms.”

Jenkins works with serpentine stone and she carves intuitively, allowing the stone to dictate the form it will take. The beauty of her pieces such as “River Otter and Kit” emerge from her ability to match her creative vision with the natural shape and colours of the stone.

Born in 1933, Jenkins lives by doing what she loves. She and a friend had taken a two week course on prospecting and she discovered that she had a passion for it. She began looking for interesting rocks and moved into serious prospecting. She went up in helicopters to search, explored while driving and hiking, and made discoveries of valuable metals.

“It’s like treasure hunting,” said Jenkins. “Your eyes become trained to see and you know the signs to look for.”

Jenkins has found a wide range of metals including lead, zinc, silver, tungsten, uranium, and copper. If there was a possibility of a significant amount, she would lease the land from the government and try to option it off to a mining company. In addition to valuable metals, Jenkins searched for serpentine stone which she quarried to use in her sculpture.

Jenkins sculptures are not limited to stone. She also works in bronze which involves first creating her sculpture in clay and then casting it in bronze.

She has created larger-than-life works of art such as a bronze bear and cub that are on display at the Grizzly Bear Square in Revelstoke.
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Now living in Langley, she enjoys working in her home studio where she has worked on numerous bronze sculptures, including her Spirit Bear.

Jenkins has also discovered a new interest to pursue. After more than 40 years of prospecting for metals for mining and stone for sculpting, she now enjoys searching for trilobites which are fossils that can be over 450 million years old. For Jenkins, the possibilities in stone are limitless.

Having exhibited and sold works at galleries and museums in numerous cities including Vancouver, Calgary, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Jenkins has inspired others to take up sculpture. Her daughter, Cathryn Jenkins is also an internationally renowned sculptor in serpentine stone and bronze.

Learn more about Fran Jenkins and Cathryn Jenkins at www.jenkinssculptor.com.
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Both Fran Jenkins and Cathryn Jenkins will be participating at The 18th Annual Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver. This four day visual arts, design, and crafts festival takes place from Nov.20-23, 2015. For more information, visit www.culturecrawl.ca.