Kahlil Gibran, 85, renowned sculptor and painter

Sculptor and painter, inventor and writer, Kahlil Gibran nourished creativity since he was old enough to mold clay with his hands. When he was only 4, he sometimes sold for pennies the tiny animals he fashioned while sitting on a curb in the South End.

"I believe talent is a grace," he told the Globe in 1967, when he was 44. "You don't deny it, you don't affirm it. But if you don't work at it, you can lose it. The only sin is in squandering talent."

Internationally honored for his work, Mr. Gibran was at home in many disciplines. From Copley Square to the South End to Jamaica Plain, his outdoor sculptures trace a map of Boston's neighborhoods. A tripod he designed is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His paintings, drawings, and powerful sculpted figures are in galleries, museums, and private collections across the country. And with his wife, he penned a biography of the famous cousin for whom he was named, the poet Kahlil Gibran who wrote "The Prophet."

Having recently contributed a sculpture that will sit in a park in the South End, Mr. Gibran had been slowed some by age, but his mind was ever energetic. He died early Sunday in Massachusetts General Hospital of heart failure, not long after going to the emergency room because he was feeling ill. He was 85 and had lived in the South End most of his life.

A restless imagination drew Mr. Gibran to many facets of the fine arts and took him down avenues some artists might shun. He built and restored musical instruments, and for his own photography he once designed and constructed a 600mm lens. A childhood bereft of money turned him to a life of invention.

"He was a spellbinder," Jean English Gibran said of her husband, speaking yesterday from their home in the South End. "This house has his signature on it. He made everything: He made the table where we sat, the desk where I work. He was a welder and made our saltshaker. When he was young, he didn't have a penny. If he saw something that he loved, he'd make it. I pulled out a ring today that he made, I pulled out a necklace. It was just one thing after another."

Concentrating on painting in his 20s, Mr. Gibran spent time in Provincetown, where he opened a boutique with his first wife, Eleanor Mott Berg, who now lives in Sweden. By the early 1950s, he had set aside painting.

"My marriage was breaking up, due to me," he told the Globe in 1967. "I had too much energy. Painting made me restless, didn't demand enough of me. After the divorce, psychiatry made me understand I had to sculpt. Now, at night, after a day of sculpting, I am genuinely exhausted."

Honors soon followed his switch to sculpture: a George Widener Medal, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a fellowship and award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the gold medal in an international exhibit in Trieste, Italy.

"I've never seen anyone work like Kahlil when he was welding," said Francesco Carbone, an artist and teacher in Boston who met Mr. Gibran when they were students at the Museum School. "I used to go and watch him for a half hour. He could get about two square inches done a day - incredible patience, a tremendous craftsman."

As someone on speaking terms with many approaches to creativity, Mr. Gibran felt no need to associate himself with a particular school of art.

"He was not one to follow styles, or let's say the thing of the day," said Reno Pisano, sculptor in Nahant who collaborated with Mr. Gibran on the park project along Columbus Avenue in the South End. "He was staunchly independent and he felt, and I'm quoting him almost, that there's a lot of art in the world today and you don't have to worry about pleasing anybody. If you're not pleasing yourself, you're not telling the truth."

Though sculpture earned Mr. Gibran a revered place among Boston artists, his name remained both blessing and curse. "He said that all his life," his wife said.

Mr. Gibran was also a godson to the Kahlil Gibran whose book "The Prophet" has sold millions of copies in the United States alone, turning him by some accounts into the third best-selling poet ever, behind Shakespeare and Lao-tzu. In 1974, Mr. Gibran and his wife published a biography on his cousin, "Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World."

"Kahlil and I worked for many years excavating and trying to analyze," Jean Gibran said. "He wanted to portray Gibran to the best of his ability, and we wrote the truth about him. I think it was the first very honest portrait of Gibran printed."

Speaking in a 1997 interview with the Globe, Mr. Gibran said his cousin's towering presence inspired his own diligence as an artist. "He was a horizon to me," Mr. Gibran said. "I had to live up to him. I had to produce. Because he was somebody, I had to be somebody."

He helped other artists be somebody, too. Mr. Gibran's wife said her husband regularly bought work by those who had not achieved his level of success, giving them money to continue. In the process, he accumulated one of the largest collections of art that had been created in Boston.

Last fall, Mr. Gibran opened a show at Boston's St. Botolph Club, where he was a member and remained vibrant, friends said.

Said Stuart Denenberg, a poet and art dealer in West Hollywood, Calif., who has known Mr. Gibran since opening a gallery on Newbury Street more than 40 years ago: "Imagine making a phone call to an 85-year-old man who answers, 'Stuart, baby!' "

"He was genuinely in a good mood all the time because he was creating all the time, with each breath," said Michael Allen, who curated the show at the St. Botolph Club. "He was a polytalent, you could feel the energy in the man. . . . You meet people like him if you're lucky enough to be living in Florence in the late-1400s and you bump into Leonardo da Vinci."

In addition to his wife and former wife, Mr. Gibran leaves a daughter, Nicole of Seattle; a son, Timothy of Stockholm; two sisters, Suzanne Huggin and Selma Vassall, both of San Diego; two grandsons and a granddaughter.

A funeral Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. today in Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon Church in Jamaica Plain. Burial will be private.