Justin Gaffrey Goes Monumental

Corten steel, coastal inspiration and a new chapter in sculptural form

Self-invention has always been at the heart of Justin Gaffrey’s artistic trajectory.

For more than twenty-five years, Gaffrey has pushed beyond the conventional boundaries of painting, developing his own materials, tools, and processes to build heavily dimensional works inspired by the natural environment surrounding his studio along Florida’s Scenic Highway 30A.

Now, that same experimental instinct has moved dramatically into the landscape.

Crab 1939, Gaffrey’s largest sculpture to date, has been selected for the 2026–2027 Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition, a year-long juried presentation of contemporary outdoor sculpture throughout Rosemary Beach, Florida.

Measuring an impressive 160 inches wide, 94 inches deep, and 92 inches high, Crab 1939 is constructed from quarter-inch Corten steel plate, welded. Its monumental scale is balanced by an unexpected openness. Light passes through it. Air moves around it. Shadows change beneath it. And despite the physical weight of its steel construction, the sculpture appears almost capable of movement.

From Hogtown Bayou to Monumental Form

The inspiration for Crab 1939 begins close to home.

Gaffrey’s studio and gallery exist within the natural environment of Santa Rosa Beach, surrounded by bayous, coastal forests, wetlands, and the nearby Gulf of Mexico. The crab form emerged from his surroundings along Hogtown Bayou, transforming something familiar into a much larger architectural presence.

Curving pieces of steel become legs. Smaller forms cascade into larger ones. Open spaces become as important to the composition as the steel itself.

The result bridges abstraction and recognition: unmistakably a crab, yet never simply a representation.

Its form changes as you move around it. From one position, the sculpture appears grounded and massive. From another, its curved legs seem ready to propel it sideways across the landscape.

Sunlight, moonlight, weather, and the surrounding environment become part of the work.

Inspired by Alexander Calder

Crab 1939 also represents Gaffrey’s renewed exploration of sculpture and his study of one of the twentieth century’s most influential sculptors, Alexander Calder.

At the beginning of 2026, Gaffrey traveled to experience several of Calder’s site-specific works firsthand. He was particularly drawn to Calder’s monumental outdoor “stabiles”—sculptures that transform enormous pieces of metal into compositions possessing remarkable balance and visual lightness.

One work became especially important: Calder’s 1939 sculpture Spiny.

“Calder’s outdoor sculptures have long stayed with me,” Gaffrey explains. “After several years away from sculpture, I returned to his language of form—ultimately embracing it as a point of departure.”

That exploration became Crab 1939.

Using principles of balance, weight, and tension, Gaffrey engineered individual pieces of Corten steel into a composition where mass and openness coexist. The material is industrial and permanent, while the resulting form remains organic, playful, and connected to the natural world.

The Physicality of Making

Creating Crab 1939 required more than drawing an idea and translating it into steel.

Its scale introduced an entirely different physical relationship between artist and artwork.

Steel had to be cut, positioned, balanced, welded, and assembled. Curves needed to work individually while contributing to the structure as a whole. Weight became part of the composition. So did gravity.

In this sense, Crab 1939 shares something fundamental with Gaffrey’s sculptural paintings. Both are constructed through physical action.

Whether moving dense paint across a surface or manipulating quarter-inch steel plate, Gaffrey approaches material as something to push, shape, build, and ultimately transform.

The difference is scale. A dimensional painting occupies the wall. Crab 1939 occupies the landscape.

Crab 1939 Comes to Rosemary Beach

The Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition selected 11 sculptures from submissions by 54 artists across the United States for its fifth juried exhibition.

Beginning in October 2026, these works will be installed throughout Rosemary Beach’s town center, pocket parks, gardens and expansive greens, transforming the community into an open-air sculpture experience.

For Crab 1939, the setting feels particularly appropriate.

The exhibition was created to bring contemporary sculpture into conversation with architecture, landscape and public space—allowing residents and visitors to encounter artwork as part of everyday life.

After its time on the front lawn of the Justin Gaffrey Gallery, Crab 1939 will enter that larger public landscape for the year-long exhibition. It is both a destination and a beginning.

Thinking Even Bigger

For Gaffrey, Crab 1939 is not necessarily the final scale of the idea.

“My intention was to create a large-scale impression that could be scaled even larger to complement a site-specific landscape that invited a larger architectural form,” Gaffrey shares. “I see this as an opportunity to create a recognizable feature for a residence or public space.”

That possibility points toward another chapter in his work: monumental sculpture created in direct response to architecture, landscape and place.

Crab 1939 demonstrates what can happen when an artist accustomed to building outward from a painted surface is given an entire landscape to consider.

For sculptural artist Justin Gaffrey, the material changed, the scale increased, but his instinct to experiment did not.

Crab 1939 is available for acquisition and is also offered as a limited-edition, site-specific commission, allowing its scale and placement to respond to distinctive residential, architectural, and public environments. (New book now available).

Crab 1939 will be featured in the 2026–2027 Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition in Rosemary Beach, Florida, opening October 17, 2026, and continuing through October 2027. Collector inquiries for Crab 1939 are available by contacting the gallery. (Crab 1939 News Article No. 1