Larry Godwin is not as young as he used to be.

“None of us are,” he said, with a smile as he shuffled across the floor of his Art Wurks studio pushing volumes of his artwork to the side with a foot. “I’ve been trying to sort out all of this, but I’m not getting anywhere.”

The paintings stacked against the walls alternately changed hues with the sun and shadows. At times, the sun struck the sculptures; other times the shadows defined them.

“Ah, here it is,” Godwin said as he fished a color-copy from a disarrayed stack of all-but- forgotten artwork.

Godwin smoothed the edges of a photograph of the full-size, metal sculpture of the Wright Brothers’ 1905 Wright Flyer III. Godwin designed and fabricated the 1905 Flyer for a Dayton, Ohio project honoring the Wright Brothers. The realist object sculpture was dedicated in 2001.

Thumping the photograph, Godwin nodded his approval.

“The Wright Brothers thought this was their best flying machine at that time,” Godwin said and added with a smile that maybe the Wright Flyer III was his best effort, yet.

Godwin considers his three metal sculptures of the Wright Brothers flyers among his best work and the most involved.

In 1985, he fabricated a 1910 version of the “Wright Flyer” for Maxell Air Force Base in Montgomery where the brothers ran a flight training school in 1910 and 1911. He was also commission to fabricate a replica of the Wright Brothers’ “First Flyer” for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. The “First Flyer” is the centerpiece of the campus. Both the “Wright Flyer” and “First Flyer” include bronze figures of the Wright Brothers.

“I didn’t know anything about airplanes but I learned,” Godwin said as he filed the photographs of his metal replicas. “When I was doing the ‘First Flyer’ for Embry Riddle, I had to think about how the brothers manually controlled the flyer and how the rudders worked. No one told me. I just worked it out in my mind.”

Over the years, Godwin has worked out many things in his mind and then turned them into works of art.

“It’s all here, except for what I was lucky enough to sell,” he said and added, laughing, that “looking around I was more unlucky than lucky.”

Godwin opened Art Wurks “a lifetime ago” on Highway 231, south of Brundidge. The working studio was a popular stopping place for patrons of the arts.

Godwin did his fabrication work at a warehouse that was part of Bob’s Feeds in Brundidge, which had been owned and operated by the Godwin family. But in recent years, Godwin dedicated and devoted his time to the care of his mother, who died in February 2014 at the age of 100.

Now, he is back at Art Wurks, and his hopes are that patrons of the arts will once again come knocking at his door.

“Oh, people stop all the time,” Godwin said. “They stop to take pictures of the chicken. Then they get back in their cars and are gone.”

The traffic-stopper for Art Wurks is a 16-foot chicken Godwin built out of chrome car bumpers back in 1962. It has a prominent place along the highway at Art Wurks.

“It’s big. It’s shiny. It’s a chicken. Everybody recognizes a chicken.”

And, Godwin admits that not everyone “gets” his abstract paintings and sculptures or his satirical clay figures of lawyers or certainly not his downright “ugly” art.

“I call it my ugly art,” he said of a painting that seemingly has no rhyme or reason to it. And, it is “ugly.” But, when Godwin wants people to fully understand the meaning of his artwork, he leaves no doubt. His sculpture, Continuum, is a tribute to 9/11. The message is clear.

A quick scan of Godwin’s studio and anyone would know that he is an extremely gifted artist.

Godwin is a painter and a potter. He’s a carpenter, a sculptor and a fabricator. He can make art from anything and everything, even candle smoke. Art Wurks is testimony to his talent.

“There are many stories here,” he said of his artwork that is stacked on shelves, leaning against the wall, packed in boxes and scattered on the floor. “I’ve got to get things organized so I can get back to work. I still have things to do.”