Poway front yard now features fierce guardian

By Emily Sorensen

A Poway woman’s yard is a little more fearsome with the addition of a metalwork dragon head.

The head, which is over 6 feet tall and weighs about 300 pounds, was created by Ricardo Breceda, a Southern California artist whose immense metal sculptures can be seen in Borrego Springs and Temecula. This dragon head is the first piece of Breceda’s work in Poway.

The sculpture’s new owner, Debbie Boyd, a retired deputy sheriff, has always loved collecting art. Her home is filled with unique pieces of African-American, Native, Alaskan and Egyptian art, as well as her own homemade hats. After running out of room on the walls of her home, Boyd turned to sculpture. Her first piece, a replica of the famed winged Nike statue, sits in her front yard by her garage.

“I discovered Ricardo Breceda’s work when I went out to Borrego Springs with a couple of friends,” said Boyd. “We stumbled across a couple of his sculptures, an elephant and an eagle.” Boyd’s friend looked the artist up online and discovered he had an enormous dragon sculpture, so big it spans both sides of a road. “I took a trip with DayTrippers to see (the dragon),” she said.

Boyd fell in love with Breceda’s work, and decided that she wanted to own a piece herself. “I was in the market to buy something small,” she said. “He had this incredible dragon that was out of my price range. We made a deal and he made me this dragon.” She described Breceda as the “Mexican Michelangelo.”

The dragon head, which was entirely handmade by Breceda and his assistants out of 20-gauge sheet metal, took about six weeks to complete, Breceda said, mostly due to the intricate scales.

Boyd had the statue installed in the front yard of her El Mar Avenue home on Saturday, and it’s already proven to be a hit. “A lot of my neighbors are excited to see the statue,” she said. She plans to have a fence put in around the dragon, to prevent viewers from accidently injuring themselves on the metal’s sharp edges.

Breceda, who was born in Mexico and moved to California 25 years ago, has been making his sheet metal sculptures for 15 years. His first was at the request of his daughter. “We had just seen Jurassic Park 3, and when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she said she wanted me to make her a life-sized T-rex,” said Breceda. “I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t.”

Despite the fact that Breceda, who taught elementary school in Mexico and sold cowboy boots once he moved to the United States, had never worked with metal before, be managed to make a 20-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex.

From there, Breceda has made a name for himself with the many pieces purchased by Dennis Avery and installed on Avery’s property in Borrego Springs, which includes dinosaurs, settlers, wild horses and much more. Breceda has shipped pieces of his artwork around the world, including to Australia and China.

Breceda’s studio, at Vail Lake Resort in Temecula, is open to the public for viewing. “A lot of people think (my studio) is like a museum, or Disneyland, or a trip to the park. I want people to come and see that I do.”

For more about Ricardo Breceda’s work, visit www.ricardobreceda.com.