As a child in New Jersey, I admired painting, and the sculpture of Henry Moore, Picasso, Degas, Calder, Brancusi, and many others. My own efforts seemed puny compared to these giants. I thought art had to be monumental. My first depictions were almost exclusively animals. I gave them as much dignity, strength, fierceness, and vitality as I could. My first sculptures were in clay, wood, and sheet metal. I made conscious experiments in style. At Oberlin college, I studied art history: German and Italian Baroque art, in particular. My studio teachers discouraged figurative art. Pollack and Oldenburg were in. I made giant soft sculptures.
I have cultivated a strong interest in the human face and figure. My hatha yoga training has developed an insight into seeing and understanding bodies. Even while drawing or sculpting from a model, I feel that I experience the pose from the inside out.
I have worked in several media. Now, I realize that sculpture has always been my calling. California, with its figurative tradition, has freed me. I have returned to my earliest impulses. I proceed by feeling, and only cautiously let ideas influence my work.
Exhibiting
Juried Shows
Go Figure , juror: Lorrie-Marie Jenkins
Main Artery Gallery, Benicia, CA, 2007
Get Fired: Hot Ceramics from the ACGA, (in conjunction with the California Clay Conference), juror: Suzanne Baizerman
Pence Gallery, Davis, CA, 2006
The Shape of Things - a Gathering of Sculptural Forms, jurors: Susannah Israel and Carol Tarsier
Artisans Gallery, Mill Valley, CA, 2005
Association of Clay & Glass Artists of California / Baulines Crafts Guild Joint Exhibition, juror: Sylvia Bennett
600 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA, 2005
Third Dimension Open Craft and Sculpture, juror: Sylvia Seventy
Marin Society of Artists Gallery, Ross, CA, 2004
Terra Forma - a juried exibition of ceramic sculpture, juror: Arthur Gonzàlez
Arts Benicia Gallery, Benicia, CA, 2003
Other group shows
Work from the Potters Studio,
The Addison Street Windows Gallery, Berkeley, CA, 2008
Creatures, Crates, and Crocks, (and other shows)
The Potters Studio, Berkeley, CA, 2008
The Naked Pencil, Ten artists draw the figure curator: Ellen Baizerman, (with: Carol Brighton, Debra Jewell, Jean Pfann, Sylvia Sussman, Christine Walter)
Oakland Museum Collectors Gallery, Oakland, CA, 2007
Nature, for instance, curator: Sylvia Sussman, (with: Carol Brighton, Liz Cunningham, Lisa Gruber, Brenda Hunt, Debra Jewell, Sally Nelson, Jean Pfann, Sylvia Sussman, Sandy Walker, Christine Walter)
The Addison Street Windows Gallery, Berkeley, CA, 2006
Box Art/Art Box 2004, ( Show & Silent Auction Benefit)
ProArts Gallery, Oakland, CA, 2004
ProArts East Bay Open Studios, (with Musia Stagg, Traudel Prussin, Barbara Beccio in 2003, Jim Hornback since 2006)
Musia's Studio, Oakland, CA, 2000 thru 2008
The Art of a Community
Arts Benicia Gallery, Benicia, CA, 2004 thru 2009
Members' Showcase,
Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA, 2003 thru 2008
Spring Open House and Winter Open House,
The Crucible, Oakland, CA, April and December, 2004
Eleventh Annual Art Auction and Gala,
Arts Benicia Gallery, Benicia, CA, 2003
Bu$h, (political satire, benefit for ART SF),
Balazo Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2002
Dia De Los Muertos Altars,
The Black Box Gallery, Oakland, CA, 2002
Studio One Ceramics Artists,
Toki Gallery, Berkeley, CA, 1999
Education
B.A.: Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio; major: Studio Art and Art History, 1969
The Crucible, Oakland [link]
Wax Working, Ceramic Shell Bronze Casting, Mold Making, Pewter Casting, Welding,
with Ellen Babcock, Cynthia Handel, Kitty Hundley, Kent Kates et al.
Studio One, Oakland, CA [link]
Portraiture, oil painting, watercolor, drawing, photography
Jewelry lost-wax casting and fabrication
Figure & Portrait Sculpture in Clay, Mold Making, with Lourdan "Bud" Kimbrell
Ceramics - with Numo Jaeger
Portraiture, oil painting, watercolor, drawing, photography
Jewelry lost-wax casting and fabrication
John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA [link]
workshops with:
Richard Shaw
Leslie Baker
Lisa Clague
Esther Shimazu
Laney College, Oakland, CA
Graphic design, drawing, figure drawing, watercolor, oil, & acrylic painting
Arts Benicia, Benicia, CA: encaustics seminar with William Harsh
U.C. Berkeley Extension: Portraiture, with Carole Peel
Figure drawing with a private group (Sylvia Sussman's), and at various institutions
Affiliation
East Bay ProArts
Arts Benicia
Berkeley Art Center
The Potters Studio
Association of Clay and Glass Artists
recent work
I have been making figurative sculpture in ceramic clay: portrait heads, faces, human figures, animals, and mythical creatures. I usually finish them with ceramic glaze or oxide, wax, paint, encaustic, or pigmented shellac. My sculptures have physicality: a concern with weight and force, extension, balance, and stillness: qualities cultivated yoga. Humor sometimes occurs. I combine working from life, from imagination, and from classical or primitive models.
I started casting metal in 2003. I have made silver ornaments, some bronze horses, a series of small winged figures, and some unique castings in pewter and bronze. I have made several multimedia pieces that incorporate figures. My quest for monumentality sometimes results in a surprising reduction in size: “tiny sculpture” or ornament.
Themes have emerged: the strong or angry woman (gorgon and medusa heads, sphinxes), horned creatures (satyrs, stags, cattle), equines (horses, hippocamps, asses), winged figures.
Drawing from the figure gives me a way to develop sensitivity of line and form, and to work intensively and rapidly with composition. I relish the spontanaity and freedom from gravity that are not available with heavy clay.
Concerns
My first concern was natural representation, then transparent style. Now I want to incorporate meaning that does not compete with the physical presence of the piece: an iconic resonance. I work to clarifiy the relationship of each piece to its genre and tradition.
I like the novelty and freshness that the clay medium offers for figurative sculpture. I am exploring the influence of size and material, on a sculptural idea.
