To say that Tom Otterness of Brooklyn is one of the most popular sculptors in the world would be acknowledging only part of his story.

He’s also a highly successful businessman, whose negotiations with municipal authorities, corporations, and institutions such as the New York Botanical Garden have brought him wealth – and enriched public spaces in cities across America and other countries.

“After more than 30 years of being an artist – including 26 years making bronzes – you get hundreds of crazy ideas, and they add up,” Mr. Otterness said at lunch the other day. “I don’t do this only for the money, but it’s nice to know that one’s work is appreciated and that it carries value.”

His bronze sculptures sometimes rise more than 20 feet and sometimes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce. But they also fetch anywhere between $50,000 and several million dollars, depending on size. His latest exhibit is being formally unveiled at the Botanical Garden today. Called “Amorphophallus Titanium,” it consists of four flowers in various stages of, well, arousal.

The 52-year-old Mr. Otterness talked about his new work with his trademark humor. When asked about the sculpture’s obvious sexual suggestion, he said: “Let’s just say it’s the world’s largest bronze flower.” It is the 90,564th specimen of vascular plant types at the 250-acre facility in the Bronx, although the only one cast in bronze.

And “Amorphophallus Titanium” is a permanent exhibit, joining nine others Mr. Otterness has created specially for New York City, including “Life Underground” on the A, C, and E subway platforms at Eighth Avenue and 14th Street, which depicts a manhole-domiciled alligator gobbling a man carrying a sack of cash; and “The Real World” at Battery Park City, which features canines, felines, birds, worms, and a scattering of pennies.

“My work is really social commentary,” Mr. Otterness said. “I want people to touch these sculptures, to discuss them, to argue about them, to find in them whatever meaning they might draw from my work. Not everything in my work is explainable, of course. But that’s good, too. It’s sometimes good to leave people somewhat puzzled. The important thing is that they touch my sculptures and talk about them.”

And touch and talk people most certainly do. Some 25 of his bronzes are currently on display in downtown Indianapolis. These whimsical works, valued at more than $5 million, range in height from 30 inches to 20 feet. Most were moved from New York, where Mr. Otterness had installed them on a five mile stretch of Broadway between 64th and 168th streets.

According to officials of the Midwestern city, the Otterness pieces represent the first time Indianapolis has installed contemporary art in public spaces.

“The very fact that the city has taken art work out of an institution says something about the importance of making a connection between people and those who govern them,” Mr. Otterness said.

But it’s not always that officialdom agrees with Mr. Otterness’s aims. Not long ago, a judge at Sacramento, Calif., said he wasn’t going to allow the sculptor to arrange a chess set – each piece was 6 feet high – on the steps of the bankruptcy court. The 32 chess pieces were in the shape of money bags.

“The judge said, ‘Forget it – the last thing that anyone wants to see outside a bankruptcy court is a radical economic critique,’ ” Mr. Otterness said.

So he undertook a sculpture that showed salmon jumping through gold hoops. The salmon were holding money bags, and they were being caught by eagles.

The work was intended to allude to the California gold rush of the 19th century.

“This was a kind of surrealistic collaboration with a very conservative judge,” Mr. Otterness said. “And I acknowledge his idea. I would never have dreamed of this on my own.”

And the lesson he drew from the Sacramento project?

“Two lessons,” Mr. Otterness said. “One, that when it comes to public art, you need to work closely with local officials and others who understand the environment, the local culture. Second, that you’ve got to stick with a project and see it through to its natural end.”

No matter where his sculptures are exhibited – in Canada, Germany, or the Netherlands, among other places – all of Mr. Otterness’s work is done at an immense studio in Brooklyn’s DUMBO – the section between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. Mr. Otterness will soon have to move his studio, however, because the building is being put to other uses.

He expects to find space elsewhere in Brooklyn.

And where does he get those “hundreds of crazy ideas”?

“I walk around a lot, I explore neighborhoods, I see the way people live – and I read a lot of newspapers,” Mr. Otterness said. “Since my work addresses social, political, and sexual issues, since the idea is to instigate conversation among people, to produce social sculpture, I need to be well-informed.”

In his conversation with The New York Sun, Mr. Otterness kept returning to his desire to generate interaction among people.

“It’s seldom that most people get an excuse to talk to perfect strangers,” he said. “I think that’s what my art achieves. And the interesting thing is, it’s difficult to predict what a conversation with a stranger will result in.”

His work has generated conversation among people since his childhood in Wichita, Kansas. In third grade, for example, he created lions of plaster. And even back then, Mr. Otterness said, he was available for commissioned work. “My classmates hired me to draw a nude picture of a disliked teacher,” he said.

He drifted to New York after high school and worked as a night watchman at the American Museum of Natural History. A series of menial jobs followed, and it was only in his late 20s that Mr. Otterness started to produce sculptures. One set of plaster figurines, 6 inches high, sold on the sidewalk in front of the Museum of Modern Art for $4.99 apiece.

He joined the group called Collaborative Projects, or Colab. Some of its other members, such as Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, and John Ahearn, also became successful artists. One member, Coleen Fitzgibbon, became Mr. Otterness’s wife. They have a 12-year-old daughter, Kelly, who aspires to be a painter.

These days, Mr. Otterness builds his sculptures with the assistance of 20 young men and women. Most of his works are completed within two years. Some have taken as long as a decade.

He said his style was influenced by what he learned in the Italian community of Pietrasanta, renowned since the Renaissance for its bronze ateliers.

And what lies ahead, especially in view of his international success?

“The necessity of keeping the momentum of business going forward still drives me,” Mr. Otterness said. “I see my art as serving the public. My work isn’t something where you need to understand a high-end language. It speaks a common language.”