Christine Sibley had a face many won't forget. Actually, make that faces.

The Atlanta artist, who owned and operated Urban Nirvana, a funky foundry/gallery on the edge of Inman Park, was perhaps best known for her popular concrete sculptures featuring peaceful, angelic faces. But after she succumbed to a massive heart attack in 1999, friends, family and fans mourned the fact that both Sibley and her art would be gone forever.

Joey Ivansco/AJC (ENLARGE)

Angela Carrington, a longtime friend of local artist Christine Sibley, holds one of her concrete pieces. Behind her on her porch is a sign from Urban Nirvana, the vibrantly funky oasis shop that once stood on DeKalb Avenue.

That's until now.

Carlos Montãno, Urban Nirvana's foreman for more than a decade, is bringing select Sibley pieces back to life — reproducing them based on encouragement she gave him to do so before her death, he says.

News of this quiet revival should delight fans of Sibley's work, who range from acclaimed garden designers such as Ryan Gainey to visitors of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where a fountain she created still runs.

The rebirth of Sibley's work takes place in the workshop of Casa Montãno, Carlos Montãno's garden art and statuary store in downtown Fairburn. Its radiant exterior pops in hues of yellow and orange. Several massive, steel butterflies attached to the building pose in mid-flutter. A red gargoyle stands guard at the entrance.

Montãno shuffles through his shop past the wooden shelves Sibley gave him when she shut down Urban Nirvana's retail operation. Among the statues, pots, steppingstones and trickling fountains hang two four-piece sets of Sibley's work, one representing the seasons, another illustrating the elements. Distinct designs including tubular swirls, seashells and leaves frame each of Sibley's signature faces. Reproductions of 15 additional Sibley pieces, including steppingstones and decorative wall plaques, are scattered throughout.

Reproducing the work provided a huge challenge for Montãno. Each Sibley clay original was lost, typical in the mold-making process. But before her death, Sibley sold her molds. The company that purchased them went out of business, and the molds were thrown away, lost or destroyed.

"After she passed I thought, 'Oh my God, now I don't have anything to use to reproduce them,' " Montãno recalls. "I had to patiently collect them piece by piece until I got the ones she wanted me to make.'

It took Montãno seven years of sleuthing and gathering to complete both sets. He would buy them from dealers or borrow them from collectors. But not every collector he approached wanted to lend them out; some simply didn't want to be bothered.

When Montãno successfully secures a work for mold-making, the process is multi-step. He attaches it to a piece of wood to keep it still and then seals it with paint or wax to protect it from a layer of latex rubber he applies. He works the latex on top of the piece to create a mold and then covers it with a slick lubricant to create a shell, which holds the latex in place. Once the latex mold is made, he peels it away from the original and pours concrete into the mold. Montãno cures the concrete, separates it from the mold and fixes any flaws. Finally he has the finished product, which he brightens with acrylic paint.

Getting the art to market

During his pursuit, a Sibley acquaintance and fan happened upon Montãno's store. Event planner and artist Kristin Vickery eventually offered to represent the new Sibley pieces in the marketplace, an aspect Montãno wasn't interested in handling. By late fall of last year, the reproductions, retailing for $20 to $200, slowly began getting out into stores.

The work is new but the artistic inspiration goes back more than three decades.

Sibley's close friend Angela Carrington was there every step of the way. Carrington recalls meeting the artist in 1966 while both were students at Wesleyan College in Macon, forging a bond that carried them through countless adventures. She remembers watching Sibley ride on the back of the late guitarist Duane Allman's motorcycle. And in 1969, the young women trekked to New York for a little rock 'n' roll soiree called Woodstock.

Long before Sibley's foray into concrete sculpture, Carrington says they would join forces in the basement of the artist's Inman Park home creating Sibley's one-of-a-kind porcelain pieces. When Sibley would open the doors for art shows, Carrington would act as hostess.

Sibley couldn't keep up with the demand, and she saw an opportunity to expand her reach by going into the concrete reproduction business. In 1988, she opened Urban Nirvana on the corner of Waddell Street and DeKalb Avenue.

Operating from 1988 to 1998, this metropolitan retreat stood as a technicolor icon amid an otherwise bleak industrial stretch bordering Inman Park. It was almost like Atlanta's intimate answer to the Rev. Howard Finster's Paradise Garden in Summerville, with Sibley as the presiding earth mother/visionary. A small farm behind the shop housed a gaggle of animals, from sheep, peacocks and ducks to rabbits, hedgehogs and pigs. Urban Nirvana played host to numerous private and public events including weddings, art shows and Mexican-style Day of the Dead bashes.

Ill-fated business venture

But the business became too much for Sibley to handle, Montãno remembers, and in hope of taking her sculpture to the next level, she sold it to the German company Stone Art in 1999. Urban Nirvana was closed, and Stone Art took Sibley's work to Mexico to be mass produced. It turned out to be an ill-fated plan.

"There was something about Christine's work, the richness of the pieces, that couldn't be reproduced the way [the company] wanted," Montãno says. The works "started losing the look and weren't appealing anymore."

After the failing venture, Montãno recalls Sibley saying she was ready to innovate and come up with something new involving her trademark faces. But then she died in November 1999 at age 51.

Like countless friends and fans saddened by the loss, George Lawes, co-owner of Kudzu Antique Market in Decatur, became concerned about Sibley's legacy.

"She was very well liked and very well respected as an artist," Lawes says. "When she sadly passed away, her work started disappearing from view."

'An amazing journey'

Yet nearly a decade after her death, through Montãno and Vickery's effort, Sibley's work is returning. In addition to Montãno's shop, pieces can be found at Kudzu and Atlanta Water Gardens.

"This kind of has had a life of its own, and I have just allowed it to unfold," Vickery says. "It's been an amazing journey, and I definitely feel her presence and her spirit helping guide this."

Montãno has no big-business plans for Sibley's work, but rather an organic approach allowing the pieces to "find their own place." He bypasses advertising the art's availability at his Fairburn shop, strictly relying on word of mouth. Now 47, he says his dream is to see one or both of Sibley's children, Joseph Raposa and Jessica Adams, take over the molds and extend their mother's work.

The 26-year-old Raposa, who works for an Atlanta-based film and TV set design company by day and manages a music publishing company and small record label in his spare time, says he's thrilled to see Montãno revive his mom's work.

"For a while, I thought it was cool [for her pieces] to be kind of exclusive," Raposa says. "Like you kind of had to have been there at the time to get a piece or whatever. [But] as you grow older, you get a bigger perspective on the world. ... It does make me feel good to see it out there."

Not long ago, when Raposa's 2-year-old daughter Winnie toddled up to one of her grandmother's angelic faces in Carrington's yard, she gave it a kiss and called it "baby." It's further evidence that Sibley's work has the potential to touch Atlanta's future generations.

"She loved Atlanta," Montãno says, "and I think people here in Atlanta need to keep learning more about her. She was an incredible lady."