WESTMINSTER -- For more than 45 years, Charles Ginnever delivered his artistic vision to the world by controlling the power of the flame.

       From the foundry's blazing heat that melts the bronze for his pieces, to the precise, white-hot tip of the arc weld gun , Ginnever has made his living using and understanding fire's ferocious capacity.

       But the 72-year-old artist, who spends part of each year at his farm in southern Vermont, has a newfound respect for fire.

       Ginnever suffered a crushing loss this summer when a barn filled with much of his life's work burned to the ground. The barn, near his home in Petaluma, Calif., stored hundreds of drawings, small painted pieces, some large sculptures, and a variety of tools, family heirlooms, and records of his sales. Very little was salvageable.

       "It is pretty devastating," Ginnever said. "I lost three-quarters of my life's work. That work proves I was alive all those years. It is a strange feeling to be starting over at 72. I've got an awful lot to make up for right now."

       Fifty years' worth of drawings burned in the blaze. He was working on a major career retrospective of his early painted works for a San Francisco gallery.

       "Those pieces were in perfect shape. They were ready to be shown. Now all of those early works are gone," he said.

       One of the hardest losses, Ginnever said, was his 1964 sculture, "Dante's Rig." The 25-foot-long construction was his first work made from purchased, rather than found, materials. Photos of the work show large aluminum wings suspended from cables. He received national acclaim for it, he said, and in many ways it proved to be a defining moment of his artistic career.

       All that remains is the steel base.

       "That was a great loss for me," he said. "It was like no sculpture anyone has ever built. It had kinetic elements and moved in the wind. It was an innovative piece at the time. I don't think it could ever be rebuilt."

       Charles Ginnever was born in San Mateo, Calif., in 1931, and arrived in Putney in 1967 to work in the art department of Windham College. He was one of a group of artists in the late '50s and'60s who challenged the traditional ways artists created art, and the ways viewers perceived it.

       "I set out to work abstractly, and my work is about visual perception." he said. "In 1958, I set out to make large outdoor sculptures that exist in the landscape without dependence on buildings. In order to realize the full potential of sculpture I wanted it to be independent of architecture and stand on its own in the environment."

       He bought his farm in Westminster in 1969 and began to create a sculpture park.

       Massive steel sculptures stand in the fields today. His largest pieces weigh in at more than 20,000 poun ds, he said. But his innovative use of space and perception make them appear to move and have a lightness. Angles change and disappear as the view moves around them.

       In 1974 he won a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and the following year was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant. These awards allowed him to quit teaching to devote himself full-time to his work.

       He moved back to California 13 years ago to tend to his ailing mother, and he found a new market on the West Coast.

       "There was more opportunity for large outdoor sculpture out there," he said.

       Settling in a large barn in the Sierra foothills, 40 miles north of San Francisco, Ginnever set up a studio.

       Over the past decade he traveled between California and Vermont. He constructed most of his large pieces in Westminister during the summers.

       In May of this year his California landlady informed him that his dream studio had been sold. He had little money to invest in a proper storage facility. A large barn up the road became available and in June he moved his work into it.

       The high, tinder dry grass swept across the field outside the barn, he said. Little more than a month after Ginnever moved his work in, the barn's owner hired a company to cut the grass, and a spark from the lawnmower set the field ablaze.

       By the time the fire department arrived there was nothing left to save.

       Ginnever is driven by his artistic vision, though he admits the market is small for 10-ton sculptures.

       "It has been a rough go of it all of the way, though I have somehow survived up to now." he said.

       "Since Sept 11, the contemporary art work has tanked." he added. "In many ways it is worse than the Great Depression. At least the Roosevelt administration employed artists for building projects. Artists like Pollock and de Kooning worked for the WPA. The current government has yet to recognize that artists exist."

       LIke the rest of the residents of Westminster, Ginnever learned recently that his property taxes had increased. He is on a fixed income, he said, living on his social security checks.

       "It is an impossible situation in Vermont," he said.

       He is still coming to terms with his loss. He flew out to California soon after the fire and sifted through the dust. He was amazed at the black, twisted mess.

       "I am still at a point of waking up at night and remembering what was in that barn," he said. "Now it only exists in my mind, and it will never be revealed to anyone else. I will never be able to reproduce those works. I cannot reproduce my mindset in 1955."

       He said a painter friend of his who suffered through a fire 30 years ago called him, and said he still thinks about the lost work.

       "He told me he's still dealing with it," said Ginnever. " But I haven't got 30 years."