On a recent Sunday night at Des Moines International Airport, Matthew Clark took a few minutes to reattach a cell phone to the silicone hand of Larry the salesman.

Larry isn’t real, but he looks as though he could come to life at any second and dash off to a departing jet, and be darn happy to do it.

But Clark’s first experience with placing “Larry” and a sculpture of an elderly woman currently known as “Granny” in a public place was all too real. At some point, a passer-by had decided to swipe the cell phone and made a pretty good effort at removing it from Larry’s grip.

That experience might be repeated over the next six months, the length of time Clark expects to have his creation “Moving About on Clouds” on display at the airport.

Maybe a flirtation with kleptomania is to be expected from a few of the estimated 800,000 people who will walk by the installation, although Clark seemed disappointed at the prospect that living and breathing travelers might do more than ponder the meaning of his artwork.

Clark contracted through a Pennsylvania marketing company to place his sculpture at the airport. It is an opportunity to place his work before a much larger audience, exposing them to a unique blend of humor and skill that he has nurtured since he was a boy but that lurked in the background while he pursued a career as a lawyer.

In the last year, Clark has had plenty of time to contemplate and create.

After eight years as associate counsel at Weitz Corp., he was laid off last summer when the contractor cut jobs in the face of a weak economy. Prior to that, he worked for the Davis Brown law firm.

“In the corporate world, there wasn’t much that I did that at the end of the day I thought seemed all that important to me,” Clark said.

At its worst, the layoff provided a “good opportunity” to develop his artistic side.

“I knew that I could draw well when I was in high school, then eight or nine years ago, I started making sculptures, and that came really easy for me,” he said.

It also was more satisfying than studying the fine print of development contracts.

“I feel like I’ve always been an artist pretending to be a lawyer,” he said. “I know that long-term, this is what I’m going to be doing. I’m a much better artist than I was an attorney.”

Some of his artwork appears to be based on whimsy. An installation piece is made up of 300 polystyrene “keep out” and “no trespassing” signs. It is titled “No you may not borrow a cup of sugar.” Another is a faux promotional brochure for headphones that stifle all sound, so that everything sounds better when you remove them.

Yet another piece is of a young boy shedding his Superman garb inside a phone booth. It is titled “Our Little Jimmy Can Do Anything if He Puts His Mind to It.”

Although some of his projects appear to be inspired by a skewed view of the world, Clark said they “speak the language of conflict.” One piece, for example, might be about the caustic rub between technology and the natural world. It shows a beaver emerging from a computer monitor that perches atop a tower of computer components. The beaver is holding a flashlight.

The project also showed Clark that he might have a career as a taxidermist. He bought the beaver on eBay and expected it to arrive stuffed and ready for placement in his sculpture. Instead, he bought a dead animal, with all its internal components intact. He couldn’t afford to hire a professional taxidermist, so decided to learn the craft himself. The beaver looks as lifelike as his platinum silicone sculptures. He says he won’t return to taxidermy.

Clark works out of a pole barn at his Ankeny residence. He is reluctant to allow strangers inside, because it is a place where he is working out ideas that might not see the light of day. There are times when even his wife, Carey, isn’t allowed inside, “and I talk to her about everything.”

“Moving About on Clouds” was a little more than two months in the making.

The raw work is done in oil clay, a special sculpting clay that allows fine detail work but is too fragile for use as anything more than a model. Clark then makes a mold from the rough draft and pours in the platinum silicone. The substance comes close to feeling like actual skin. He uses silicone paint, glass eyes and human hair, which he dyes and barbers and puts in place one strand at a time.

For Larry and Granny, the result is almost too real. Two airport visitors who were looking for the exhibit nearly missed it because they thought they were walking by actual people.

In the piece, Larry appears to be carrying on a lively cell phone conversation. Granny is reading Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and looking a little apprehensive about biding her time in the terminal.

Clark said the piece is not so much about his ability to create lifelike sculpture as the wonder it triggers in observers. He hopes they spend some time contemplating how the figures pass their “non-productive” time waiting for a flight.

One thing we know is that it is 9:55, based on the time on Granny’s gold watch. But it could be day or night. And why in the world is she reading “Our Town”? Maybe she teaches a high school literature or drama class. Maybe she is wondering why she is stuck, maybe forever, in the airport. And where is she going? Maybe to visit family on the other side of the country.

“Making lifelike sculpture doesn’t interest me that much,” Clark said. “I’m more interested in how these people fill their non-productive time at the airport. I’m not interested in being conventional. If it’s too easy to understand, people will say, ‘I get that; now what’s for lunch?'”

Clark has won several awards for his work, but awards don’t necessarily pay the bills. He is hoping his unconvention take on the world around him will be a marketing success.