Tony Dow now an abstract artist

Associated Press

TOPANGA, Calif.

He is, and likely forever will be, best known as good old Wally Cleaver, the big brother who had to bail out a goofball sibling facing one dilemma after another on the classic TV series “Leave it to Beaver.”

For the past dozen years, though, Tony Dow has been carving out a new career, as a sculptor with pieces that have shown at numerous venues, including what is arguably the world’s premier art museum — the Louvre in Paris.

This weekend, more than 30 of Dow’s pieces in bronze, steel and wood went on display closer to home at the Debilzan Gallery in Laguna Beach, and they could fetch several thousand dollars each from collectors. But despite his respected reputation as a sculptor, Dow acknowledged there could have been as many people at Saturday’s opening reception wanting to rub shoulders with the Beav’s brother as see his art.

“I think it’s hard, especially with the Wally image, to be taken seriously at pretty much anything other than that,” he said with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

At 67, Dow has a head of grey hair and lives with his wife, Lauren, in the wooded Southern California arts colony of Topanga Canyon.

His reputation as a sculptor reached a new height four years ago when he had one of his bronze pieces accepted at 2008’s Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a 150-year-old art show staged annually at the Louvre.

The modest, soft-spoken Dow is quick to point out that the work — a distinctive abstract piece titled The Warrior — was not placed in the museum’s permanent collection. And if you went to see the show that year, you would not have found it anywhere near Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.”

“But it was a show that was represented by 20-some nations, and the U.S. had 14 pieces there, and there were two sculptors, and I was one of them,” Dow said between sips of mango-flavored lemonade as he relaxed on a recent hot, end-of-summer day in the living room of his home.

“So it was a big deal,” he added softly with a shy smile.

Dow doesn’t complain that he’s still associated with his “Leave it to Beaver” character. He loved playing Wally opposite Jerry Mathers’ Beaver from 1957 to 1963, so much so that he reprised the role as an adult for a TV movie and 104 more episodes of “The New Leave it To Beaver” during much of the 1980s.

Even now, he still keeps in touch with all the old gang.

“Jerry, I talked to him just a couple days ago,” he said of Mathers.

Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, Dow still looks about as fit as the teenage Wally did. But you probably wouldn’t recognize him as that character otherwise — except for an occasional Wally expression or mannerism.

People who stop him while he walks through his picturesque neighborhood are more likely to ask about his dog, Bodie, a dreadlocked Bergamasco Shepherd. It’s in the hills of his neighborhood that Dow finds much of the rough-hewn, bark-covered wood known as burl that he carves into intricately detailed sculptures.

Dow is often described as an abstract artist, but a tour of his adjacent home studio shows numerous pieces reflecting a pop art and modern style as well.

Dow, who painted as a youngster, began sculpting more than 30 years ago when he was still acting and directing. He planned to get serious about it when he retired from television.