Votran Transfer Plaza - Dan Gunderson

Cool, 1994
16-foot-tall painted steel structure

Dan Gunderson
DeLand, Fla.
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Dan Gunderson is a professor at Stetson University, where he has taught ceramics and design since 1976. He received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of South Dakota and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Wisconsin.

Gunderson has held solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Berkeley. His work is in many public collections including the Ringling Museum, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Orlando City Hall Collection, and the Erie Art Museum. He has won numerous awards and has been awarded a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. 

The sculptor has a new body of work that was influenced greatly by his young son. He created "Toys Are Us," a 10-foot tall sculpture on display at the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando. The sculpture is composed of hundreds of children's toys and action figures such as Spider Man, Superman and Kung Fu Panda. The figures are stacked, arranged, and attached to a metal armature and are somewhat reminiscent of the works created in the mid-‘60s when artists including Robert Rauschenberg and John Chamberlain were using "non-traditional" (found objects) to create new art forms.