At Optima, our appreciation and curiosity about materials — and how those materials are expressed — extends beyond architecture and into the artistic medium of sculpture. The sculpture garden at Optima Sonoran Village is home to several original sculptures by Optima founder David Hovey Sr., and exemplifies how art can influence and impact the space it resides within.

The garden includes five original David Hovey Sr. sculptures: Curves and Voids, Silver Fern, Triangles, Intersecting Arches and Duo. Originally created as a large and monumental sculpture, Duo is crafted out of steel to create a striking silhouette alluding to a man and a woman gazing at one another. Meanwhile, Curves and Voids expresses steel and its potential through grand, sweeping curves. The voids are laser cut within the sculpture’s steel planes; the holes provide gaps and textures that contrast and play off of the sculpture’s curves.

Each original sculpture within the garden is just one of many variations of a design. David Hovey Sr. often experiments with color, size and orientation within his sculpture designs to breathe new life into the same form, placing these iterations across Optima communities. At the sculpture garden at Optima Sonoran Village, Hovey Sr. chose to use Corten steel rather than coat the sculptures in bold hues. He did so to ensure that rather than competing with the building’s vibrant facade, the sculptures would complement the community. Of the five sculptures, Curves & Voids is large-scale, and the other four remain of modest size. 

We invite anyone who visits Optima Sonoran Village to take a stroll through the sculpture garden, to immerse themselves in the art form and to discover how sculpture can transform the space it’s within.