Malcolm Coelho doesn't believe in taking himself too seriously. His ?Auto-Retrato? (self portrait) is a mangled mess of oxidized iron and wire molded into an abstract face on a rustic, four-wheeled vehicle.

It's not that Coelho sees himself as a motorcar or is obsessed with racing automobiles. In fact, he seldom drives his 1985 jeep wagon, preferring to get from his scruffy, one-bedroom apartment in Mexico City's Condesa neighborhood to his sprawling, two-story studio in Santa Maria la Rivera by bicycle.

?I just like playing with words,? the 36-year-old sculptor and painter explained, as he proudly displayed the piece during a recent interview with THE HERALD.

?Auto in Spanish can mean ?self,? and it can also mean ?car.? In this case, I guess it's kind of a mixture of both. I like art with a sense of humor.?

The Mexico-born Coelho, who began his artistic odyssey as a graphics student at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1986 and changed his major one year later to architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, said he has always worked with ?discarded materials, trying to find new applications for other people's junk.?

From his first individual show in 1992 at the Woods Gerry Gallery in Providence, Rhode Island, to his most recent group exhibition at Mexico City's prestigious Museum of Modern Art, a recurring theme in Coelho's works is the recycling of scrap metal.

Like ?Auto-Retrato,? many of Coelho's works are mechanized, giving them a ?life of their own? and a means of interaction with their audience.

?I don't like the limited nature of traditional, square canvases,? he said, pointing to an oversized oil painting with metal appendices that swirl past the image to create a feeling of continuous motion.

?I try to combine different media to create new types of art forms. I think art, by definition, has to be unexpected, unrestrained.?

Coelho was quick to add that this does not mean that art should be so abstract or so trendy that it only has significance in the context of a specific time or place.

?I'd like to think that my works are more transcendental, that they will withstand the test of time,? he said. ?Too much of the art we see now is like fashion, what's in style today, is out of style tomorrow.?

The son of a British father and a French mother, Coelho considers himself a living cultural collage of European and Mexican influences, and much of his art incorporates Greek mythology with pre-Colombian relics.

Such is the case with his ?Venus in Teotihuacan.?

This tiny canvas has modern geometric shapes mixed with an abstract female figure attached to a miniature copy of a Toltec head.

?Here, I am blending two traditional styles of art to create an entirely new style,? Coelho said.

Taking inspiration from U.S.-born Alexander Calder and Swiss kineticist Jean Tinguely, Coelho said he has always been enthralled by the concept that art can be mobile, in constant interplay with its environment.

It is precisely with this view of ?engineered art? in mind that Coelho developed his most recent and, to date, most ambitious project, a massive, multi-colored, 4.2-meter-high, 2-ton iron sculpture that was unveiled last month on the campus of Greengates School in Balcones de San Mateo.

?Walk the World,? which Coelho said is intended to symbolize a borderless planet, ?where all nations and cultures are represented and interconnected in unexpected ways,? was specifically designed to be harmonious with the architecture and surroundings of the school.

?I tried to make it all proportional,? Coelho said. ?The space surrounding the work is large and expansive, so the sculpture had to be big.?

Keeping in mind that a large segment of the work's intended audience is still wearing short pants and bobby socks, Coelho built it with the idea that it could serve not only as a visual attraction, but as a hands-on jungle gym as well.

?Kids love to climb on it,? he said. ?We don't want them to climb too high, because we don't want them to fall and hurt themselves, but we do want them to feel that they are interacting with the sculpture.?

Coelho said that, given the global nature of Greengates School ? which has students from all four corners of the globe ? the piece is meant to reflect a spirit of internationalism.

?I chose to represent the continents themselves as empty spaces so that you could see through them and connect visually with another person on the other side,? he said.

While the sculpture itself is physically static, he said that his ever-present theme of art in movement ?comes from people walking around and through the piece.?

For Coelho, ?Walk the World? also marks a new direction in his personal artistic development.

?I think it is a turning point in my style,? he said. ?There are no rough corners to this work. It's not only not mechanical, but it has smooth finished edges, a more polished appearance than my previous pieces.?

And where does Coelho plan to go from here?

?I want to keep growing, keep finding new media and new ways to express myself,? he said. ?Art is organic, ever changing, and artists must also expand and develop to reflect the world they live in.?