Casey Parlette's page had no description on it before this one. Twelve pieces are live, $2,400 to $35,280, median $14,400 — and the widest material range of any sculptor we carry: carved wood, forged and welded bronze, inlaid abalone shell, and on one piece, steel and slate with no bronze at all. The subjects go past fish, too — a hermit crab, a chambered nautilus, a spiny lobster, and a trilobite are all in the current lineup.

Built by hand, not cast alone

Most sculptors we carry work in bronze only; Parlette starts with carved wood — curly maple for "Wahoo," curly redwood for "Barracuda," quilted maple inlaid with abalone for "Mahi Mahi" — then hammers, forges, and welds bronze for the head, teeth, or fins, finished with polished stainless steel eyes. "Finders Keepers," a hermit crab, pairs a welded bronze crab with a carved wood shell, acacia and walnut in the version we carry. "Ancient Mariner" builds a nautilus shell from exotic woods like manzanita burl around a forged bronze body. "Trilobite" breaks from all of it: hammered steel, textured copper, wenge wood, and slate. The fish pieces come sized by count — three, four, five, up to seven — and mount flat to a wall.

"Old Timer" depicts a California spiny lobster in two sizes — 32 by 24 by 12 inches at large, 22 by 12 by 6 inches at small — with each segment of the shell individually shaped and welded rather than cast as one piece, the way a real lobster's armor actually grows plate by plate. "Ancient Mariner" comes in a matching pair of scales, a large version at roughly 24 inches and a smaller tabletop version around 15 by 18, both built the same way: a forged bronze nautilus body inside a shell carved from exotic wood.

How these get ordered

Five of the twelve pieces currently run $5,000 to $10,000, and another four sit between $2,500 and $5,000 — this collection leans toward mid-size single pieces rather than large multi-fish schools. None of the variants here are tracked against a running stock count, so choosing a piece comes down to size and configuration rather than watching a number count down. "Old Timer" and "Ancient Mariner" each come in two built-in scales rather than one, and the school pieces — Wahoo, Barracuda, Mahi Mahi — are ordered by fish count, three up to seven, so sizing is really part of placing the order.

The weight of a welded bronze head and the grain running through a hand-bent piece of maple are things you register holding the piece, not looking at a photo of it. If you're trying to fill an oddly proportioned stretch of wall with a school of these, that's worth a call before you order — we can talk through sizing.

— Steve Schlag, founder, Dolphin Galleries