Bio

“Piggy and Dave on a Stroll by Gloribet Agosto-Rosa” Bozman, Maryland.

Dave Dunn’s art is defined by a unique ability to invest his metal constructions with both whimsy and primordial dark mystery. His works draw on imagery and meaning from a metallurgical era lost to the modern age. His frequent use of medieval imagery in his welded and forged work evokes in the viewer an historical allegory, while imbuing his creatures of nature with abstract nuance and fantasy.

Combining rough steel imagery with historical symbols of contest and predators, his creatures take on mysterious and fantastical life forms. Drawing on a lifelong environmental consciousness, he assembles repurposed objects, found metal pieces or modern steel implements with deft creativity, offering the viewer a more modern and empathetic connection to the natural world through movement and personality.

From his earliest years growing up on Harris creek flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, he combined driftwood and other found objects deposited by high tides and repurposed them into art objects while daydreaming about what lurked beneath the waves. He also spent formative years living in Paris, France, the son of an American diplomat, surrounded by the medieval and renaissance imagery of the old world. Today he works out of his “Dunn In Metal Studios” in Silver Spring, Maryland and his small workspace where he began his career in Bozman, Maryland.

Recently, Dave was invited to exhibit his “critters” at the Fall 2024 Maryland Waterfowl Festival, where he introduced the first of his “flying” critters. In February he had his first solo museum exhibit as the 2025 Featured Southern Artist at Discovery Park of America, where his six-month installation expanded his genre to critters native to northwest Tennessee where the museum is located. In April, in a subsequent solo exhibition at the Zebra Gallery in Maryland entitled “Taking Flight”, he dramatically expanded the flying critters series.

Recent Shows and Exhibitions:
Discovery Park of America (largest museum in NW TN) “2025 Featured Southern Artist”: Ten Year Southern Artist Showcase: “Reelfoot Critters” Feb to Sept 2025, six month solo installation.

Zebra Gallery, “Take Flight”, Solo Exhibition, April 2025, Easton, MD.

Waterfowl Festival, “Chesapeake Critters” Exhibiting Artist, November 2024, Easton, MD.

Studios of Key West, “Gone Fishin” Solo Exhibition, February 2024, Key West, FL.

D’Art Center, “King Crab in Nature’s Homage” 2024 Nat’l Juried Public Art Exhibition, City of Norfolk, VA.

Dave Dunn is represented by Easton, MD Zebra Gallery, on Artsy, and in private collections in Paris and Normandy France, Willerzell Switzerland, New York City and Shelter Island NY, Los Angeles and Malibu California, Washington DC, New Orleans LA, Lexington KY, Asheville NC, Austin TX, Key West FL, the Hunt Country of Virginia, Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay area in Talbot County MD.