THE ARTIST

Michael Dinardo has always worked with his hands. Raised on a farm, he learned early how to shape and transform materials. Later, he refined his sense of form in a renowned salon on Crescent Street in Montreal. In Europe, he devoted himself to restoring medieval houses in England and France, breathing new life into stone through ancient building techniques.

His encounter with sculptor Paul-André Leblanc marked a turning point. Leblanc, a recognized master of metal trees, shared his knowledge with Michael. What began as a transmission soon became a transformation. Michael absorbed the technique and reimagined it, infusing it with his own inner search and sensitivity. Very quickly, his art stood apart: he was no longer simply sculpting trees, but creating inhabited presences where matter and memory meet.

Inspired by real forests as well as by legends, Michael’s sculptures combine fidelity to living forms with symbolic depth. Each tree is both a presence that seems to breathe and a sanctuary — a space of silence and remembrance, where a word, a memory, or the discreet trace of a loved one can be sheltered. Copper, twisted, welded, and patinated with acid and fire, becomes bark that carries the marks of time and transformation.

For Michael Dinardo, the studio is an extension of the forest. His eternal trees are bridges between earth and sky—works that listen, that watch over us, and that remind us that some farewells are never spoken: they take root, silently, in the form of a tree.