Joel Perlman, BFA '65, was 14 when he decided to become a sculptor. He was a scrappy scholarship kid at Fieldston School in the Bronx then, hard hit by the recent, sudden death of his father from a heart attack at 47.

To help restore his youthful sense of possibility, the father of a classmate introduced him to sculptor Jason Seley -- later a Cornell art department faculty member and dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. "He wore jeans and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and was surrounded by piles of junk, and he seemed very happy," recalls Perlman.

The vision of "a life where work and play were one" appealed to him immensely, notes author Philip Palmedo in "Joel Perlman: A Sculptor's Journey," a hefty 224-page book published this year by Abbeville Press.

Written in a lively, accessible style, the book is laced with famous art-world names, from David Hockney to Henry Geldzahler, and marvelous anecdotes from the artist's life so far. It traces Perlman's artistic development, from Cornell fine arts (1961-65), where he learned to sculpt, to London (1964, 1968-69), where British artists influenced him, to the University of California-Berkeley (1967-68), where he earned a graduate degree in art, to Bennington College in Vermont (1969-72), where he worked and taught, to New York City in 1972, where he continues to create the expansive, evolving body of work that has made his solid reputation in the art world and where, for 33 years, he has continued to train students at the School of Visual Arts.

"A Sculptor's Journey" features 111 plates of Perlman's work -- including "Sky Spirit," the soaring 20-foot steel sculpture he designed for ABN AMRO Plaza in Chicago, installed in 2004. There also are archival photographs of Perlman helmeted and goggled astride his Matchless 500cc motorcycle in 1965 and of Perlman feverishly welding in his Bennington studio in 1972.

Perlman's mother, Jean, who died last year at 93, was slow to support his aspirations. Until his success became apparent, "She used to tell everyone I was an architect," he says.

But when he enrolled in Cornell's undergraduate fine arts program in 1961, Perlman found an advocate in sculptor and professor of art Jack Squier. "He was the guy who was in my corner. He told me, 'Be your own boss or you're never going to be happy.'" Although Squier considered welding a vocational skill inappropriate to an Ivy League university, Perlman followed his advice to take night classes at Ames Welding in downtown Ithaca. And when a handful of unpaid tickets for speeding on campus stalled Perlman's graduation, Squier secretly paid them, the artist later discovered.

Since his first one-man show at the André Emmerich Gallery in 1973, Perlman has had 40 solo exhibitions, including one at Cornell's Johnson Museum in 1990, and has work in scores of public collections, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He has won a Guggenheim fellowship, multiple prizes and commissions, and his work has been the subject of 64 art publications and cited in hundreds of others.

Perlman's sculpting methods are intuitive. He cuts eccentric shapes out of steel -- more than he'll need -- then tacks them together again and again until he gets a "compelling visual statement." Welding steel still captivates him. "It's like magic," he says. "You touch a rod to metal, there's a flash and buzz, and two pieces become one."

Today, Perlman seems in the prime of his personal and creative life. Married to attorney and businesswoman Nancy Skluth since 1992, he has homes and studios in lower Manhattan and eastern Long Island. The couple's sons, Jack, 10, and Samuel, 8, delight in making Styrofoam sculptures in their dad's studios, and Perlman is so engaged in their lives that he calls himself a "soccer mom." A former marathoner, he still runs every day. Palmedo writes that artistically, Perlman continues to develop and refine earlier formal ideas, such as the Starbursts and Wheels, and to invent new ones, like the Spheres."

Still, it is a surprise to discover that Charlie Moore, former Cornell director of athletics and physical education, and his wife, Judith, may be responsible for a major shift in Perlman's style. The book recounts how in 1996 the Moores visited Perlman and asked him to create an outdoor sculpture for the donors' oval of the Robert J. Kane Sports Complex on campus. Judith suggested that Moore ask Perlman to evoke the spirit of the Olympics by "getting some circles in the piece." Kane '34, a former Cornell director of athletics and physical education, had been president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and Moore is a former Olympian.

"Charlie, I don't do circles," Perlman told him, but then relented, promised to think about it -- and found he liked the idea.

While his work still can be hard-edged, the sculpture, "Dynamis," now installed near Bartels Hall, became the first in a new and highly successful direction for Perlman, characterized by assemblages of large, circular rings and shapes that resemble open globes and gears.

"What happens to you adds up and comes out in your work," says Perlman. "That's how it should be."