Lynn Liverton, a sculptor, is statuesque in her own right: a tall, broad-shouldered, long-limbed surfer with dark blond hair, blue eyes and lightly bronzed skin. She loves her full-time job as an art teacher at Honolulu Waldorf School, where her son, Charlie Liverton, is in the eighth grade, and when she can, she pursues her own artwork.

Among her best-known works are the large bronze busts of Stan Sheriff at the Stan Sheriff Center and of Jack Lord at Kahala Mall. In 2004 she was commissioned by the Army’s 25th Infantry Division to create a life-size bronze statue of a soldier. That project grew into the group of four soldiers standing by a soldiers’ cross in the Schofield Memorial Monument at Schofield Barracks.

Current commissions include a statue of late surfer Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, who introduced surfing to Israel and whose family will be taking it to Tel Aviv, and a figure of a female soldier that will be added to the Schofield monument.

But a project dear to Liverton’s heart remains unrealized. In 2006 she began working with the Rell Sunn Educational Fund to create a life-size bronze statue of Sunn, fondly known as the Queen of Makaha. The surfer, educator, environmentalist and breast cancer activist fought the disease for 14 years until it took her life in 1998. She was 47.

Liverton, 51, a former architect who moved to Hawaii in 1990, started surfing and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said she looked up to Sunn. “Rell’s my hero, and the turtle, which I love, is her aumakua, and I don’t get (commissions) to do girls much.”

Liverton never met Sunn, although she said she saw her once in the showers at Kuhio Beach after surfing but was too shy to speak to her.

Sunn’s Hawaiian name, Kapoliokaehukai, means “heart of the sea.” A champion longboarder, she was a co-founder of the Women’s Professional Surfing Tour and held a yearly Menehune Surf Contest for local children. The event continues to be run by the nonprofit fund headed by Jan and Tony Carreira, Sunn’s daughter and son-in-law, to promote environmental education and raise money for breast cancer causes.

The sculptures — ideally there will be two, perhaps a freestanding statue in Honolulu and a bust in Makaha, Liverton said — have been put on hold for lack of funds and sites. They would include surfboards engraved with her achievements.

On an October day between classes, Liverton paused for an interview in the Waldorf School art studio, one long wall of windows with a view onto the leafy green campus makai of Kalanaianaole Highway in Aina Haina. On the tables sat life-size clay heads in progress. Self-portraits, they were being sculpted by students.

“I tell them it’s a great success if they make their head look at least like a relative,” she said.

Some students can also see likenesses of themselves, made with their permission, in their teacher’s sculptures. For instance, Liverton said, “I couldn’t get Doc Paskowitz’s ankles right, and so I used a kid’s ankles.”

To model a new maquette for the Sunn statue, Liverton photographed a student standing and holding a surfboard. (High school students and faculty keep boards on campus and often paddle out for a surf class.)

The 2-foot-tall clay model depicts the slender Sunn in a relaxed pose at the water’s edge, her weight on one foot and her head turned slightly, a longboard under her arm, its tail resting on the sand. Liverton is still working on a “ripple” that wraps around the tail of the board and one ankle.

“How do you make metal look like water?” she asked.

It is completely different from her 2008 maquette, which showed Sunn in a crouch, riding a wave with her toes on the nose. “The wave was too big; it would block your view of the sea.” Liverton added that the new version will use far less bronze.

Although the artist is donating her time, she estimates that $150,000 will be needed to scale up the model to life size (Sunn stood 5 feet 8 inches) and cast it in bronze at the Utah foundry that has finished most of her sculptures; no facility in Hawaii can cast such large pieces.

Liverton also teaches screenprinting and woodworking. Two years ago the school bought canoes to start a paddling team; each member of the junior class makes a canoe paddle out of recycled wood donated by Bart Potter, a Waldorf parent.

Showing off the leaf-bladed paddles, Liverton’s eye was caught by a clay form in a corner. “There’s the bust I did of Rell for the first model,” she said. “It’s not a good likeness. The eyes are too far apart.”

She smiled and shrugged. “I’m just going to break it up and put it back in the recycled clay pile.”

While it’s been a long wait to finish the Sunn project, she’s made good use of the extra time to try and get it right.

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ON THE NET:

>> For more information on the Rell Sunn Educational Fund, visit rellsunn.com.