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Brad Stedman is an artist who has held two exhibitions at the Image Factory and whose murals are on the walls inside Peppers Pizza and the Princess Hotel. And while art is what pays Stedman’s bills, the 33 year old has a new love â€" craft. He shared his unique, self-styled creations with us today.

Keith Swift Reporting,
These are Brad Stedman’s creations. He calls them â€" Belizean Culture â€" and the intricately detailed craft works are made out of tying wire, paper and masking tape.

Brad Stedman, Artist
“I call them ‘Belizean Culture’ because they represent Belizean. Like this lady for instance is beating her hudut and the guy cutting his coconut. These are all the things I see around Belize City. I just look at them and put them in art.â€￾

The 33 year old Stedman has been creating his unique artwork for ten years. It takes about 3 three hours to make one and it begins with intertwined strands of tying wire and pieces of paper.

Brad Stedman,
“This is from scratch. Simple wire, tying wire. Tie it up together and form it like a man. Then second, newspaper â€" simple newspaper.â€￾

And that’s when the work begins…about 15 minutes later the makings of a man took shape â€" a microphone holder in this case. Stedman says he does it for the love more than the money. He is a full time artist and painting signs pays his bills. But he says he gets a thrill from creating three dimensional works.

Brad Stedman,
“Canvas work is nice right, I like it myself. I do a lot of canvas work but this is not about sitting down and painting a painting on the wall, this is about creating an image. So it is kind of difficult as you could see a while ago when I was making it. The time I take to make it, it is not just sitting down and putting a stroke there. It is the time you take to wrap the tape and get everything levelled off together. So it is a little bit more work.

It is a new kind of artwork. As you can see, if you can go downtown to anyone of the stores you don’t see anything like this. I just like art, trying new things and that is me. I love art. I find some people that try it and they don’t like it. For me, it is my life. I like it.â€￾

He likes it and Stedman plans to continue his labour of love â€" twisting, taping, tapering and creating.

Brad Stedman,
“It is something I just started to bring out to the public and the tourists like it and we’ll see what happens in the future. Right now I am creating some new work in this same model. I’ll be having an exhibition soon so it will be a surprise.â€￾

Brad Stedman still does work with signs and you can contact him at 620-5693.