1. ca. 1965 to 1970

Colored resin on birch plywood, 1965 to 1967 (1 to 5)
Cast iron (scrap pieces) 1968 to 1970 (6 to 10)
Painted steel, 1969 to 1970 (11, 12)

Wardy did his earliest works in colored resin before he left surfboard making. They were made at his Wardy Surfboards shop on Forest Avenue in Laguna Beach, California, or at his workshop extension nearby. He used clear or colored resin as with his surfboards.

Wardy showed many works at the Festival of the Arts of Laguna Beach, an annual multi-part summer festival that exhibited works by Orange County, California, artists, as it still does. He rented space and hired an attendant for the booth while he ran Wardy Surfboards, just blocks away. All works were sold.

In l966, Wardy made a series of large-scale shaped paintings and sculptural floor pieces using colored resin on birch plywood. He created these in Los Angeles, where he had a studio after leaving Laguna Beach. The owner of a carpentry business in the same building, making fine wooden desks, offered Wardy use of his equipment.

For larger versions, please click on the thumbnail images, and/or scroll down for a slideshow of them.

During part of 1968 and 1969, Wardy worked at a Los Angeles company, still in business, which bent steel piping and made cast iron machinery parts. He was glad to work without wages to learn the techniques of working with steel and iron, including the use of heavy-rigging equipment that could help him in building large sculptures. Wardy’s employer soon insisted on paying him.

He made numerous sculptures from discarded scrap cast iron, of which numbers 6 to 10 are examples. He also constructed six large steel pieces (10' x 6') and innumerable other large and smaller pieces in the company’s facilities. The silver-painted steel sculpture (11) is an example. Wardy recalls the care required for bending the steel pipe. He envisioned this piece as something that people could safely walk through. In number 12, photographed about 1997, he is standing inside a smaller version of this piece with his daughter, Meredith.