As the artist mounts his horse, a small crowd gathers in admiration for the creator of the sculpture.

Joseph Fernandez, 35, arts major, created the horse. It’s just one of his many sculptures that are featured from places like  Long Beach, Downtown L.A. and Pasadena to the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“It’s beautiful,” Atheseus Jauregui, 21, psychology major said. “It (the horse) has been to all the colleges around here. It’s part of the family.”

The horse has become somewhat of a celebrity in the courtyard next to the Behavioral Sciences Building because Fernandez has managed to accomplish one of the hardest things for an artist: involve the audience.

“It was complete when people painted on it,” said Fernandez. “I lay out paint and let people do what they want. It’s kind of a live scrapbook.”

After Fernandez dismounted the horse, Jauregui was ecstatic to have permission from Fernandez to climb on himself and have a friend snap some photos from a smartphone.

Fernandez, who began his career as an artist after eight years in the Navy, now finds himself rocking the boat in the art community.

“I was doing engines in the Navy,” Fernandez said. “It’s a 360 from being an engineman and cleaning up diesels and then going to art. I still think it’s fate. It’s very surreal that I’m making sculptures now.”

There is a different state of mind that turns the world into an artist’s playground for Fernandez.

“I work with whatever I have around me,” Fernandez said. “That way, I’ll always be able to make art whether I make pieces out of clay, buy the pieces, or find them in the trash. It’s just the ability to make art. That’s what I concern myself with.”

Prominent themes in Fernandez’s art are the recycling of what some would consider trash into an immortalized sculpture.

“I find stuff in the trash, at swap meets, or there have been times when a house is foreclosed and everything inside it is up for grabs,” Fernandez said. “It’s like giving an object a second life. I want to make something that’s timeless.”

Fernandez would like to have a future filled with green art.

“There’s a lot of waste. Waste goes hand in hand with not being accountable for anything,” Fernandez said. “To be accountable for something is truthful. When I make art, I’m accountable because in 200 years, it will still be here because of the materials I used. I am able to look at a bronze sculpture that is 2,000 years old with adoration for the craftsmanship. I want to contribute in that way also.”

Fernandez’s work has already made an impression with the campus community with his horse. He said he would “like it to stay.”

“It’s always here,” Sierra Jayasinghe, 18, general studies major, said. “We’ve all just kind of gotten used to it. We all interact with it when we’re playing hacky sack.”

The main goal for Fernandez is just make successful art and be the best artist he can be.

“Every little dream is part of a big dream,” Fernandez said.  “My goal, after committing to something, is just to know that my commitment was fruitful. I feel something happening. If I was a mechanic and everyone told me I was good, I’d try to be the best mechanic in the world.”