Although he just turned 80 years old this spring,   Jorge Blanco still considers himself to be a child at heart. His eyes can’t help but light up when he speaks about his work. For the Venezuelan-born American artist who emigrated to the States in 1999, his life’s work isn’t just his profession. It’s a calling.  Since graduating with a degree in Industrial Design from the Neumann Institute of Design in Caracas in 1971, Blanco has never stopped creating, working as a sculptor, graphic designer and illustrator. He has placed 30 large-format public sculptures across the globe, 25 in the United States, including two in Sarasota, illustrated children’s books, designed furniture and has published the comic strip The Castaway since 1980.

“In my opinion, every kid is an artist,” says Blanco. “Something changes in your brain when you become a teenager, where people tend to lose that spark. But for me, in my head, I still am a boy who just wants to create art.” While Blanco’s most prominent passion has always been rooted in sculpture, The Castaway, which he was inspired to create during his time spent living in Europe in the late 1970s, illustrates some of the foundational tenets of his artistry. Clean, simple lines depict the protagonist, a clever, wily fellow forever marooned on a tropical island. There is no dialogue in The Castaway—just as in his sculpture, Blanco looks to create a universal language in the comic, accessible to all age ranges and cultures. 

The levity of The Castaway, the remnants of that childlike glee that persists in Blanco to this day, is a staple throughout his portfolio. While the protagonist of The Castawaywill never fully leave the island despite his repeated attempts, there is never a sense of desperation, only humor at his prolonged situation.  That same youthful exuberance and clean lines can be found in Blanco’s sculpture, particularly in his public installations, which are typically large-scale abstract works of painted aluminum. Blanco’s sculpture work has evolved over the decades—his first solo exhibition in 1974 featured bronze sculptures cast from clay models. He later shifted to steel, which he found heavy and cumbersome to work with, before settling on aluminum in the early 1990s.

“I started out by welding aluminum together, but realized that I didn’t like it because it felt like I was gluing the sculptures together,” says Blanco. “My pieces are assembled now with nuts and bolts—you have to think more about how you put it together and it makes for a more interesting end result. It also makes for easier delivery, I can take them apart and put them back together on location.” Blanco’s evolution in style coincided with his progression into public art. In 1996, he was commissioned to install four permanent sculptures in Tokyo, Japan, setting him on a career trajectory that would make his art known around the world. “I became interested in public art because I started thinking about how a show in a gallery or a museum is only for a small group of people,” says Blanco. “Public art is for everybody. It’s for every age and every language. There are no barriers.”

Blanco’s public installations are typically large, colorful, exuberant expressions of abstract playfulness. Bravo, located at the roundabout of Ringling Boulevard and Orange Avenue in Sarasota, stands 18 feet high by 10 feet wide, white figurines of aerospace aluminum and stainless steel reaching high into the air. Blanco frequently finds inspiration from sport, which he equates to music in its power to bind people together in moments of collective joy. Runners on South Tamiami Trail depicts figures frozen mid-stride. He also has a multitude of sport-inspired works outside of Sarasota. Kick in Carmel, Indiana features two humanoid sculptures dueling over a soccer ball. Air in Park City, Utah consists of three large orange aluminum sculptures riding atop red bicycles on lime-green tracks. 

“Sport has the ability to attract tens of thousands of people together and create moments where everybody is happy and excited. It doesn’t matter about the religion, race, age or language of the people in the stadium, they are all experiencing these positive emotions together,” says Blanco. “It’s like a magnet that unites people instead of dividing them.” It’s that unification, above all else, that Blanco is in pursuit of. The ability to use his work as a force for positivity, to bring the same feelings of joy that he gets in creating art as audiences find in viewing it.