What is Whiptail? 

Whiptail is the home studio of sculptor Matt Werner.  It’s also home to a thriving tribe of long-tailed “whiptail” lizards.  The lizards are gracious hosts, killing scorpions, eating tomato worms, and occasionally providing comic relief from the unrelenting sun.  Matt Werner, on the other hand, creates fine art from wood, which is of no use to the lizards.

Matt’s artistic focus is on creating realistic 3-D images of people in narrative themes—he’s what’s called a figural sculptor in the realism style.  To Matt, his sculptures appear as snapshots of the human experience—what it’s like to be human in all its different dimensions.  Since the subjects of the sculptures are taken from the human experience, the vitality and warmth of wood Matt uses are essential to their believability.

Matt has been trained in classical figure sculpture by Ben Hammond, Hal Stewart, Lincoln Fox, Vala Ola and Rick Casali.  His work has been displayed at the West Valley Art Museum, the Phoenix Sky Harbor Art Museum, the Tempe Center for the Arts, the Shemer Art Center and Museum, and numerous juried exhibitions of the Sonoran Arts League, Glendale Arts Council and Arizona Artists’ Guild.