Spencer Schubert always has loved making stuff.

As a kid in Kansas City, nothing made him happier than playing with Legos.

“I remember I had a really good friend who I played Legos with,” Schubert says. “For him it was about making a fire truck and playing with it. For me, it was about making a fire truck.”

He’d finish one Lego sculpture, then dismantle it to make another one. Schubert says it’s always been about creating. Not about having created.

So when he sat in Chuck Crawford’s art class at Shawnee Mission East High School and learned that people do, in fact, create for a living, Schubert felt something inside him click into place. He spent hours a day drawing and painting and sculpting in the creativity cocoon that was Crawford’s classroom. The work he did there earned him a fine arts scholarship to the University of Kansas, where he honed in on figurative sculpture.

Today Schubert, 34, has his dream job, creating for a living from a sunlit corner studio at The Bauer, a sort of office building for artists in the former Arts Incubator space on 18th Street.

Figurative sculpture is his focus as an artist, but Schubert also crafts advertising props, retail displays and other objects through E.S. Schubert Commercial Sculpture Studios. He recently scored his most high-profile commission: A bronze bust of baseball legend Buck O’Neil for the Missouri capitol’s Hall of Famous Missourians that will be unveiled on Monday. State lawmakers also commissioned him to craft a bronze bust of Dred Scott, the Missouri-born slave who famously (and unsuccessfully) sued for his family’s freedom in 1857, and Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host from Cape Girardeau.

Between studying Dred Scott’s face and making new sculptures for his show at the Leopold Gallery on April 13, Schubert sat down with Ink to talk about his creative commandments — all the big and small things he does to block out distraction, find inspiration and set about doing what he’s always wanted to do: Make stuff.

My schedule

Before he got married and had a kid, Spencer Schubert worked long, irregular hours. His priorities have changed since then.

“Sculpting is the most important thing in my life except for my family,” he says.

Schubert found that he can get just as much done by staying focused when he’s in his studio. Sticking to this schedule helps:

6:30 a.m.

Wake up, make coffee, see wife Ryann off to work

7:30-8 a.m.

Read a book or sculpt Play-Doh with 2-year-old daughter Ruby

8 :30 a.m.

Take Ruby to school

8:40 a.m.

Arrive at studio, make more coffee

9-9:15 a.m.

Answer emails and post project updates to his E.S. Schubert Commercial Sculpture Studios Facebook page while heating up cold clay

9:15 a.m.-1 p.m.

Sculpt

1 p.m.

Make more coffee. Schubert rarely breaks for lunch but drinks up to 12 cups of coffee a day.

1:10- 3 p.m.

Sculpt

3-3:20 p.m.

Clean up

3:20 p.m.

Leave work, pick up Ruby from school, try not to attract stares.

“My fingernails are constantly dirty,” he says. “I get funny looks because I look like I’ve been digging a hole all day.”

How I focus

In an age when multitasking is so easy (and thanks to smartphones, so hard not to do) Spencer Schubert makes a conscious attempt to focus on one task at a time. He says it can be tough to get to a hyper-focused state. But once you’re there, creating comes easy.

When Schubert needs to get a lot of sculpting done, he turns off his cellphone and email notifications on his Mac. He gets his hands into the clay and starts working. Soon he’s in what he calls “flow mode.”

“Flow is when time is disappearing and work is getting done and you don’t realize it,” he says. “I always do my best work when I have no idea I’m actually doing any work.”

What I do when I’m stuck

Some people shut down when they feel a creative block coming on because they’re afraid of failing. Spencer Schubert believes that to get good at anything, you have to be OK with making something that totally sucks every once in awhile.

“If I’m stuck, it’s more effective to get some clay in my hands and start making something,” he says. “You don’t have to hit a home run every time, you just have to hit a ball.”

What I’m working on now

Occasionally, Spencer Schubert is stumped. Lately he’s been trying to sculpt Dred Scott, which is hard because so few photos of Scott exist. Schubert knows he wants Scott to have an intense gaze that challenges the viewer. But the shape of Scott’s jawline? He’s still figuring that out.

“I’m almost at the point where I need to start over,” he said on a recent Wednesday afternoon. “Sometimes I’ll do something as drastic as cutting off the whole face.”

The same could be true for writing or painting or drawing plans for a house. When one part just isn’t working, it could be best to cut it out.

“It’s almost cathartic,” he says. “It’s like, ‘OK, get that crap out of there.’ It’s a fresh start.”

How I handle stress

Spencer Schubert says he experiences two types of stress. The good kind is scary but exciting — sort of like the feeling you’d get if you were about to climb a mountain. It makes him work harder. The bad kind feels like being crushed by a mountain. It’s immobilizing. Schubert says it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between the two. His trick: Ignore thoughts about failure.

It’s like when you’re canoeing, he explains: “There’s this huge wide-open river. In the distance is a rock right in the middle. As you’re getting closer, you think ‘don’t hit the rock.’ And you hit the rock. Your mind doesn’t hear the ‘don’t.’ It hears the ‘rock.’ ”

When he feels like he’s about to hit the rock, Schubert reminds himself that what he’s doing is work, not magic.

“Art is not this wispy, ethereal thing,” he says. “It’s directed effort. The only reason I’m good at this is that I’ve done it a lot.”

What inspires me

Spencer Schubert reads about art and making art and looks at the work of other sculptors to become motivated. Here are a few of his current favorites:

1. The astonishingly lifelike sculptures of Ron Mueck

2. “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” by David Bayles and Ted Orland

3. “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell