After career of sculpting Civil Rights leaders, hockey greats, Crystal Lake artist to go to Ghana to teach

Watched all day by heads and surrounded in his studio by a maze of tools, metal bars and a furnace, Crystal Lake resident Erik Blome has made a living out of bronze sculpting and teaching others how to do so.

Blome is now headed to Ghana to continue that work as part of U.S. Fulbright Specialist Program, which seeks to exchange knowledge with other communities both in and out of the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of State.

Over the course of six weeks, done over two trips, Blome will teach at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. While there, he will build students a furnace, train them how to use it and show them how to pour bronze.

Even as a child, Blome was always into art and being creative, he said, crediting his father, a graphic designer with an intense work ethic, which rubbed off on both Blome and his brother. In high school, he was known as the “artsy kid.”

“I didn’t really realize until later, but I’m a hard worker,” he said. “But I think that is what helped me a lot.”

Blome eventually went to college where he took his first sculpting class. He didn’t initially fall in love with it, but after graduating, he caught the bug. He then went for a master’s degree in sculpting, which, despite his father’s advice, turned out to be a great choice.

Next, he rented out a small, “rats in the wall” space in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, where he began teaching classes and working on his sculptures, he said.

His early work consisted almost exclusively of Black figures, including a bust of Michael Jordan’s father, James Raymond Jordan Sr.; Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; and scientist George Washington Carver, he said. He thinks this is because a lot of his earlier sculpting in grad school was of one of his friends, who was Black.

Although, after he and his wife had a child, Blome said he needed to find more work. He printed postcards as a result and sent hundreds out to everyone he could think of. By the time he was in his 30s, he was cruising.

“It just started rolling,” Blome said. “My career really started to go.”

Possibly his largest project to date can be found outside Scotiabank Arena in downtown Toronto, where both the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association and the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League play.

The project, which consists of more than a dozen life-sized bronze sculptures of some of the greatest Maple Leafs players in the team’s history, has become a tourist attraction in the city and was created over the course of four years, Blome said.

“They were such a hit with the fans,” he said. “People were literally out there taking selfies with them all year long.”

He’s also done several Civil Rights sculptures that he’s proud of, including sculptures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Today, he has work in about 20 states.

“[Bronze sculpting] is hard work. It’s brutal work,” he said. “I don’t think my talent is extraordinary. … If you see the hours I put in, it’s not easy for me to sculpt. It takes me a lot of time.”

These days, he is in his Woodstock studio practically every day, and works upwards to 70 hours per week, he said. He also has a few people who help him out in the studio, including Grant Patterson, who has worked under Blome as a sculptor’s assistant.

Patterson said he became involved with Blome in an effort to work within the arts. He quickly became interested in learning the process and has worked with Blome for nearly a year.

“You have to be interested in doing it, because it’s not easy,” he said.

Grayslake resident Lemar Wilson, a teacher at Stanton Middle School in Fox Lake who has worked as an assistant to Blome for six years, said he thinks what separates Blome is his hard work and attention to detail.

“He puts a lot of time into his sculpting,” he said. “For as long as I’ve known him, he’s at the studio seven days a week. On the low end, it might be six days a week.”

In describing his boss, Patterson said Blome is approachable and cool to work for. He answers questions, but also trusts you to get work done on your own, which frees him up to do other work.

“He usually has so much on his own hands, that he loves when you separate from him and do your own thing, and then he can check your work,” Patterson said.

In addition to Blome’s portfolio, he has taught and received four Fulbright scholarships.

His first Fulbright came in 2012, when he went to Egypt for six months. His second one came in 2016, which took him to Uganda for six weeks, but he stayed a little longer.

His third, which came at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, took him to Uganda again, but that time for another six months. For his current one, in Ghana, he’ll be gone for six weeks, which will be split into two trips. He left on Jan. 4 and arrived in Ghana the next morning.

The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 and has given more than 400,00 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists the opportunity to study, teach or conduct research, according to the State Department.

Their ranks include 60 Nobel Prize winners, 88 Pulitzer Prize winners and 39 who have served as head of state or government, the department said in a news release.

“I actually love the Fulbrights,” Blome said. “Because you actually get to pull away from your studio and go somewhere for a while and focus on teaching.”

Despite the success, Patterson described Blome as a “normal Midwestern” person.

“If you were sitting next to him in a bar, you wouldn’t think you’re sitting next to a superstar of his field,” Patterson said.

Blome is “just a good guy,” Wilson said. “I love what we do.”