“Caudill’s linear stainless steel sculptures lift our eyes and spirits with lyrical gestures and rhythms. They contribute an optimism to public places, atriums and special gardens. Those who know him say his unique art is a natural expression of his strong positive personality. But he suggests these works are celebrations of the joy and faith shared by us all.”

— Lena Bartula, former director, Guadalupe Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico

 

“I was Dean of the UofL School of Music when Dave Caudill created the sculpture on our façade as well as the large mobile that hangs in our lobby. Both of these complicated artworks were developed and installed on budget and on deadline. I enjoyed working with Dave and I’m glad to recommend him for both creative capability and project management expertise.”

— Dr. Herb Koerselman

 

“In the past, I have judged many steel sculptures for national competitions. I must tell you, I found his creations to have such simplicity, with a real clarity of style, pushing dramatic movement to an all time high.”

— James E. Seidelman, former director, Headley-Whitney Museum

 

“Dave Caudill’s imagination wanders freely through art and craft … he’s such a creative person!”

— Mary Miller, former Executive Director, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft

 

“Dave Caudill’s Riffs is the perfect addition to one of our gardens … The overall effect is graceful, theatrical and wonderfully animated.”

— Harriet Fowler, former Director, University of Kentucky Art Museum

 

“Aspire serves as more than the centerpiece of the Arts Center, it has become a symbol of the spirit of the Arts Center itself, and Dave’s enormous creativity has helped us determine that direction. We are so grateful that he has been our partner in this exciting project.”

— Dr. Harrie Buecker, former Executive Director, Oldham County Art Center

 

” … conduits of gracefully arced emotion …”

— Nancy Bronner, Arts Across Kentucky magazine

“they grabbed the light like a rope and twirled it over the hereabouts and the beyond.”

“My wife and I, who live in the boonies, have a Dave Caudill sculpture in our yard, a bold fluid gesture of stainless steel lines, like roots jumped up out of the ground into dance forms, like Arabic letters, or Hebrew, spelling out the progress of the day’s light, and its change from season to season.

Recently, for almost a year, we had a remarkable companion for it, another Caudill piece, likewise shaped and spirited, a freestanding kind of clef with its own music, whose command of the west was undisputed, but who was nonetheless drawn to cavort with its big sibling in the east, asking us please to direct the performance.

However we situated the one romance of root and steel with the other, something right happened, they could do no wrong, these two acrobats – we had a new sculpture whenever we answered the call to discover what it might look like this time. We pushed and pulled and rocked them this way and that, they clang-chimed like tower bells announcing a joyous union.

The surrounding acres of woodland and meadow loved those two long armed lovers, separately or joined together either way, especially in moonlight the owls, the owls drew closer in and were more numerous, the dogs and cats rubbed up against them and trailed their tails over them, the rain popped and slid and shone on their burnished runways like it was being staged. Who knew what all slept within their mystery and influence. Some nights when I awoke, it was to their migrating presence out there on the other side of the wall.

When guests came, the next thing after drink was the current view of them, out this window or that: these shape shifter marvels that moved around the house and yard taking us with them: how they grabbed the light like a rope and twirled it over the hereabouts and the beyond.”

— James Baker Hall, Harrison County, August, 2004

James Baker Hall was Kentucky’s Poet Laureate, 2001