SAGLE — Step softly around that sleeping doe — she looks as if she might spring up and bolt at the mere whisper of a sound.

Show even more caution if you choose to approach that bison, as he’s reared back ready to take on any challenger and win.

Never mind that these are just sculptures. They have, nonetheless, the qualities of life carved into them to the point that blood seems to course through their veins.

“That’s what I’m known for,” said award-winning artist Gabe Gabel one recent sunny afternoon in her Sagle studio. “The feeling of life and vitality.”

Both attributes are on display in spades right next to her in the form of a life-size horse sculpture that is just hours away from being sent to the foundry for casting in bronze.

“Charlie,” as he is called, is named after a quarter horse gelding Gabel received as a gift some years back, following his illustrious career as a race and dressage horse. And here he stands yet today, muscles rippling and mane in full flight, poised for a quick pirouette as he shows his stuff in the arena. And here, in this very pose, shall he stand forever.

“He was a lot of horse,” the artist said as she ran her hand across a flank so real you expect it to ripple under her touch. “I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle him if he was 10 or 15, but, at 26, he had settled down. I became his retirement home.”

This life-size tribute to a much loved animal came about when one of Gabel’s collectors commissioned the piece for an outdoor bronze at her Texas home. In a career spanning nearly four decades, the artist has done her fair share of horse sculptures in tabletop scale.

“Forty years’ worth,” she calculated. “Hundreds of them.”

Ah, but Charlie is the first to reach the lifelike scale of its namesake. The collector called in July to ask if Gabel was game — she was — she began ordering supplies in August and started sculpting in earnest starting in September.

Working alongside fellow artist and assistant Mary Day, Gabel has spent the better part of every day since then bringing the horse to life. How many hours? Don’t ask, she counseled.

“I figure I’m making 50 cents an hour,” she joked.

Stage One involved sculpting the high-density foam model that would become Charlie’s core, followed by layers of wax as the musculature and physical detail took shape.

“And then the clay is the final skin over it,” said Gabel.

No sooner has Charlie come together than he will be sawn in two at the Kalispel, Mont., foundry, where his body will be made in plates through a process that involves creating silicon rubber molds, two stages of dipping in liquid ceramic and, lastly, the pouring of 1,900-degree bronze into the completed molds.

“When the bronze is flowing, it’s like looking into the sun — liquid gold,” Gabel said. “I never get tired of seeing that. It’s the moment when the piece becomes art.”

From there, the bronze horse will become the first of five, limited-edition sculptures, each priced at $85,000, according to the sculptor.

The difference in size between this piece and the large body of work that makes up the tabletop horses brought surprises to the sculpting — a process that didn’t end when she put down her tools and called it a day.

“It’s been a joy, but I probably sculpted it twice lying in bed at night, thinking about how I was going to handle the challenges,” Gabel said.

“Working larger is actually easier than working smaller, though the amount of heavy work is harder,” she added. “Just turning this guy around takes two people and a lot of luck.”

As if there wasn’t already enough horseflesh in her fall season, Gabel continued her work as art director for the Carousel of Smiles — an ongoing local project to restore and completely repaint an antique carousel in its entirety.

But it was Charlie that had the majority of her attention. And, based on the way the artist slides her fingers along the bony expanse of his nose, across the veins that travel there and down along the softly rounded tip, he still does.

“It’s hard to keep my hands off him,” Gabel said. “He’s addictive. I’m really going to miss him.

“He’s a very romantic horse,” she continued. “The flying mane, the flipping tail, the arched neck — it’s romantic.”

With such a trove of smaller sculptures belonging to a far-flung group of collectors, it stands to reason that — after this limited edition series is done — Gabel might return to business as usual and leave the full-scale horse concept behind. When asked if that was the case, the sculptor responded by saying the question was like asking a new mother whether she planned to have another baby immediately after she had just given birth.

“If you’d asked me that question a week ago, I would have said, ‘Never again,’” the artist said. “But, yeah — I’d do another one. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made on this one, though. Live and learn.”

To learn more about Gabe Gabel and her work in bronze sculpture, oils and acrylics, visit: gabegabel.com

(Writer’s note: Special thanks to Valle Novak, my journalistic mentor and longtime pal, for letting me know about this art-related article opportunity in time for me to see Charlie in person. As a writer, I am forever in Valle’s debt for the knowledge and inspiration she generously shared — even though she does persist in calling me Little Davey Gunter.)