Most people who work with scraps of metal see scraps of metal.

But not Charlie Applegate. He sees a piece of art.That's apparent when you pass by his Danielsville home on Mountain View Road and you see a 7-foot-tall horse, intricately crafted with pieces of metal or an eagle in flight perched in his front yard.Upon closer inspection, the horse's mane looks as if it were spun from strands of silver and the eagle is so delicately woven that there is no doubt that if it were released from its pedestal it would soar. These replicas of nature are carefully crafted using paper patterns, mild and stainless steel, imagination and an artist's fascination and respect for nature.Applegate's love of art came to him very early."It started with my dad. He made plywood cutouts, and I started doing them too," he said.And, although Applegate still works with wood, sculpting with metal is his choice of medium. He became captivated with metal when at welding school."Metal doesn't limit my creative side. There's nothing to consider but the metal. There's no grain. It's easy to work with," Applegate explained as he held a perfectly sculpted bison skull, exposing an underside of teeth and sinewy anatomy.As a fitter welder for the Fuller Company most of his adult life, Applegate's infatuation for steel and his limitless imagination never tired. When he looks at a piece of steel, all he thinks about is "What can I do with it?"And so, dragons, eagles - lovers spinning in a maze of intricate metal that symbolize their everlasting spiritual love - twirl and come to near life, as does every other sculpture in the Applegate home.Born along the Ohio River in Kentucky, and growing up in Ohio, hunting and connecting with nature was natural for him. He will tell you how he takes pain to recreate his sculptures as close to nature as possible, but, he adds, "my sculptures do not move, or grow, or fly. They are only imitations of the real thing."Despite knowing this, Applegate still tries to breathe life into each sculpture he creates.Like the horse. Applegate was on a bow-hunting trip when in the middle of the night his imagination saw a horse running toward him out of the dark. As it got closer, it faded."I started thinking, I want to create this. I want to find a way to get solid steel to move and fade into nothingness," he said.The horse lived in Applegate's imagination for three years. Then he started to create with the line of the horse's neck."One day, while I was playing with fine wire, I thought this (wire) is like next to nothing," he recalled.From that thought, a life-sized duplicate image of a strong horse's head and partial horse's body developed that reveals the horse's spine and vertebrae captured with such delicateness and lightness that it is opposite of the strength seen in the horse's head. It's Applegate's faded-horse image revealed in art.The eagle, made solely of mild steel that was inspired by nature, was his first piece of work. It took five months to complete after "lots of trial and error," Applegate admits.Applegate wanted to produce something as majestic as an eagle with his own hands.Applegate gestures to his many wild animal trophies, which cover nearly every room in his home."I love them," he said with genuine affection. "When people ask how can you kill them, I tell them I've been a hunter my entire life. It's who I am."Applegate is a hunter, but he's also a man who thinks like an artist, creates likes an artist, and is able to use his spiritual energy to create a carbon copy of the real thing.Charlie moved to Danielsville in 1980 with the love of his life, his wife Chris. They have three children and six grandchildren.You can see Applegate's work at RiverWalck Restaurant in Parryville, or see the horse in front of his home on Mountainview Drive. Applegate's work is also for sale. You may contact Charlie Applegate at

wildthings1969@verizon.com.