When Jeff Wolf was 5, he remembers sitting in a huge sand pit near his Utah home. Simply playing in the pit, he loved when the sand would slough off and leave ledges of clay — which would be a blank canvas for his visual memory. While he had never witnessed the iconic Mount Rushmore in person, he would carve the presidential faces, and before he knew it, he was carving bucking horses, cowboys and much more.

"I think my talent chose me," Wolf said. "I grew up just wanting to create."

Wolf, 52, of Benjamin is a sculptor of his life's experiences, actual memorials and moments captured in time, viewed and experienced through his own eyes, mostly of western stories -- cowboys, native Americans and other western wildlife.

While his talent for working with his hands and clay came to him at a young age, it took him years of life experiences to realize his ultimate dream of becoming a professional artist.

He was raised on a large ranch in Goshen, where every day was spent on horseback. "My backyard was open range, and I was irrigating 180 acres when I was 12 years old," Wolf said.

"When I grew up, we worked because there was work to do," he said. But when he wasn't working, he was experiencing the open world of nature that was there for him to explore. "That's something I've always prided myself in, was being able to live in the wild and become part of the landscape."

In addition, he distinctly remembered being put to bed and eavesdropping on the tales told by cowboys, including his father.

"I grew up listening to the Old West stories, and that's where my true fascination with my interest with the West came from," Wolf said.

As he aged, he continued to develop a deep passion for the West and work on art, but ventured off for other careers.

"When I was 10 years old, I made up my mind that I'd be a world champion bull rider," Wolf said. And he pursued that profession.

In high school, he went to state finals all four years, nationals one year, continued to rodeo for two years in college, and then went on to a professional career riding barebacks and bulls for many years.

But in 1983, he retired from bull riding and started a livestock equipment company with some friends.

"I figured I'd do something with my life," Wolf said.

The company was tremendously successful for four years. "Then the market went dead, and things kind of spiraled downhill until we lost that business," he said.

From there he would become a ranch consultant, a welder and a manager of a large ranch in Colorado, among other things.

During his time in Colorado he was sculpting quite a bit, but had not started a professional career per se, although he had been selling art and sculpture since 1975 on a small scale.

Before he knew it, his piece titled, "Down the Rough Edges," was in a small art show in Steamboat Springs, Colo., and it changed his life.

The sculpture depicted a scene he witnessed on a Nevada hunting expedition of three mule deer feeding on 11,000-foot table as lighting struck.

"I remember that flash of light and those deer busting back over those ledges, so I created the piece," Wolf said.

That sculpture would be viewed by Jim Heckbert and put in his gallery. "Jim was doing a great job promoting me," Wolf said. "He was one of the few galleries who wanted to help build an artist's career -- and that's what he was doing for me."

Heckbert, of Steamboat Springs, remembers seeing the piece after his wife pointed it out to him. He explained how Wolf accentuated the anatomy of his work, such as horses, where one can see the stress in the movements.

"When I look at art, I am looking for something unique; I am looking to see some feeling and some emotion," said Heckbert, who is not only a former patron, but collector, too. "With sculpture, what I like to particularly see is movement, and what Jeff is able to do is take the feeling, emotion and movement and put it into the piece."

Heckbert continued, "He just has this gift; if he sees it, he can run it through his fingers and make it come out in clay."

After being picked up by Heckbert's gallery, Wolf left his other careers behind. "Since then I haven't looked back, and have been sculpting since," Wolf said.

His work has since been recognized in countless competitions, local and national, all with top honors, and he has also gained a fan-base, including Cedar City resident Renn Zaphiropoulos.

"He is the next [Frederic] Remington," said Zaphiropoulos, who owns more than 10 of Wolf's sculptures, including a 3-foot-high horse and cowboy looking at the horizon that he bought four years ago. "He knows how to sculpt and put spirit in his work," Zaphiropoulos said. "You look at the forms, he depicts the movements, he is very, very good."

And those who work beside him, such as Craig Hone of Genola, who has shared his personal studio with Wolf for the past two and a half years, are continually pushed to do great things.

"As an artist, we're able to bounce ideas off one another," Hone said, who also described Wolf's natural ability to teach others and his humble personality as a bonus to his skills. "His natural ability to put things together well has helped me, so it's so nice to have someone there with a great feel."

Although his work is inspirational to many, it has pushed some other things out of the way.

"There are a million things I'd like to do -- I'd like to braid, I'd like to engrave silver, I'd like to paint -- and I could do them all if I put my mind to them," Wolf said. "But I knew way back when I was young that this is what I was meant to do, so that's what I've stuck with."

Wolf critiques other artists by appointment, teaches sculpting and is continually showered by compliments from past and present students who are grateful for his commitment to the arts.

"The thing that just amazes me about him, and I can speak for other students, is that he doesn't have any reference, he just innately knows the anatomy of his pieces because he has studied and has been doing this for so long," said Tamaree Littlefield, who has been a student of Wolf's since his very first lesson in October 2008.

"It is just thrilling to see how much he has helped other people do a better job of their art work, whatever it is," Littlefield said. "He inspires us all."

He sometimes works for several days in a row. While some are created from personal encounters in nature, others are from stories he has heard, and some come from dreams -- much like his sculpture of a cowboy riding a bull, titled "Two Seconds Away."

"I have these dreams, and these dreams will keep reoccurring until they're so vivid in my head, that when I finally can't take it anymore, I just start creating," Wolf said. "It's like my hands are just tools. I am not doing anything; it's just coming to life on its own through my hands."

His visions and dreams, which are then carved in clay and then bronze casted, have afforded him a comfortable lifestyle. "But that's not to say there hasn't been twists and turns in the rocky road," Wolf said.

Most of his work holds a high trade value, and is priced anywhere from $250 into the thousands, one piece even costing $75,000. But his greatest honor is that his works have raised more than $600,000 in the past 10 years for the betterment of life through select charity organization such as the Cystic Fibrosis Celebrity Ski Benefit and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

"That's my way of giving back for what I've been given, and to help somebody else out with my talent," Wolf said.

He added, "I don't know if I'll ever be rich, but I've lived a pretty rich, colorful life," Wolf said. "I've done pretty much what I've wanted to do, and it seems like everything I've tried to do outside my artwork, it was always my artwork that would come back to bail me out."

For more information, including Wolf's art work, classes and critiques by appointment, contact Jeff Wolf at info@jeff-wolf.com or visit his website at http://www.jeff-wolf.com.