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Paul Moore’s Centennial Land Run Monument Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-12-17 Gordon Alt
In 2019, Sculptor Paul Moore FNSS completed his monument of the 1889 Centennial Land Run in Oklahoma City, OK. It took him over twenty years to complete this powerful work, which is one of the largest monuments in the world. It stretches over an area slightly larger than a football field and contains forty-five powerful sculptures of horsemen and wagons racing over the Oklahoma landscape of hills and
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“So Close to the Banks of Oblivion” An American Master is Rediscovered Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-12-17 Steven D. Branting
Inattention has doomed too many masters. Without provenance, context or an appreciation for cultural continuity, artistic treasures become disposable bric-a-brac. And so it nearly was for two companion bianco Carrara marbles that had lain unattested for decades in the storage of a small Idaho museum. Now proven by extensive research to be the works of sculptor Madison Colby (1842-1871), the 19-inch
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Guest Editorial Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-10-08 Margaret Nicholson
Michel Langlais, President of the National Sculpture Society, has succinctly summarized the issues that have brought us to this state, and we are asking the loaded question: do we need monuments? Indeed, if we followed the injunction of Exodus 20:4 and made no graven images, we would not have these problems. I hope that we continue to not only seek out more ideas on what to do with the old, but also
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Art and Anatomy, Part II: Bird Sculpture Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-10-08 Sandy Scott
An understanding of the important bones, joints, muscles, where they attach, and how they articulate is necessary for the bird sculptor. In addition to this knowledge, the bird sculptor must know the major feather groups. The feather sets are basic, and every bird has the same groupings.
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Remaking History Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-10-08 Joe Nazzaro
This article follows Wesley Wofford’s Journey to Freedom Harriet Tubman monument. From its origins as a private commission, to becoming a much needed and relevant voice during these tumultuous times, Harriet Tubman is a historic figure that inspires hope in everyone. The poetic parallels of this statue traveling around the country during the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing short of serendipitous
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Southern Light in a Beautiful Sculpture Garden Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Lauren Joseph
Much has been written about the value of art in our society and one of the things that the arts do so effectively is communicate the feelings and emotions of living through a specific time in history. In 2020, the world is going through a very challenging time. Bruce Munro, a British artist whose works are in large-scale and experiential, hopes that his art can speak to that challenge. In a recent
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The Contemporary Art Medal in America Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-03-01 Eugene Daub, Bev Mazze
First was the formation of the American Medallic Sculpture Association (AMSA) by a group of sculptors, supported by other visual artists, art historians, museum curators, medal collectors and art columnists, who were determined to keep the art form alive. The eventual success of this undertaking was due in no small part to one of AMSA’s founding members, John Cook, a professor of sculpture at Penn
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Stories in Your Pocket: How FIDEM Influenced US Medallic Art Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2020-03-01 Jeanne Stevens-Sollman
Fédération Internationale des Éditeurs de Medailles (FIDEM) is a medallic organization consisting now of over 40 countries. FIDEM was founded in France in 1937 by mint directors and friends in order to establish a community of artists, scholars, and patrons of medallic art, encouraging mint artists to create medals of their own choosing, holding Congresses to share medal exhibits, lectures, and techniques
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Andrea Verrocchio and His Followers: An Exhibition Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Gordon Alt
Fifty exceptional works of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) are on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. This important exhibit has sculpture, paintings and drawings of one of the most important Renaissance Masters of the fourteenth century. While considered foremost a master sculptor along with Donatello and Michelangelo, he was also noted for his important innovations in painting
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Dance in Sculpture of the Early 20th Century Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Tatiana Portnova
This article is concerned with the ratio of plastic arts as exemplified by sculptural works depicting dances of the early 20th century. Special attention is paid to the Greek motives in the Russian art of this period, which became the subject of inexhaustible aesthetic and artistic interest. The representation of ancient dance motifs, their figurative image and the nature of antiquity in sculptural
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Butter Sculpture: The History of an Unconventional Medium Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Pamela H. Simpson
With its roots in ancient food molds and table art for Renaissance banquets, butter sculpture in the United States debuted during the centennial and flourished in the first quarter of the twentieth century. As the dairy industry moved from farm to regional cooperative creameries and eventually to national brands, butter sculpture appeared at fairs and expositions. Both amateur and professional sculptors
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The Haas Brothers: Madonna At Marianne Boesky Gallery, NYC Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Arthur Ivan Bravo
The Los Angeles-based Haas Brothers have arguably at least partly made a career of either casually or playfully minimizing the traditional dichotomy between art and design, rather than/if not as a way of directly questioning it. Designers cum artists by way of sculptural practice, the twins—Simon and Nikolai—started out nine years ago as the former, commissioned by decidedly celebrity clients, though
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Carl Milles: Master of Fountains An Interview With Kent Ullberg Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Gordon Alt
This past June, I had the opportunity to participate in the National Sculpture Society Annual Meeting in Brookgreen Gardens, and attended a fountain-side talk on Carl Milles’ Fountain of the Muses. It was given by Swedish/American naturalist and sculptor Kent Ullberg FNSS. After returning to Washington, I decided to revisit Milles’ Fountain of Faith just outside Washington. I realized after seeing
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Digital Frontiers in Sculpture: A Technology Toolkit Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Ricky Kimball
I will never forget the first time I ever pulled a piece of my own artwork off of a 3D printer, and held it in my hand. As a 3D artist, my entire artistic scope had mostly only existed in gigabytes, and pixels. I loved sculpting in a program called ZBrush. I had spent hours upon end learning anatomy from traditional clay sculptors, and even went so far as to get certified in using the program. In 2015
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The Many Faces of Eyevan Tumbleweed: Turning Found Wood into Figurative Sculpture Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2018-12-01 Jodie A. Shull
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” —Henry David Thoreau
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Giovanni Balderi Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2018-09-01 John Karl
“…You Carve Inside of Yourself and …Become a Spectator of the Sculpture that Appears While you Work.” —Giovanni Balderi
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(Thought) Process Driven: The Inconsonant Imprints of Mind and Machine Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2018-06-01 NR Catren
“Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides Full nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall?”—Wilfred Owen, Futility “Paradoxically, the ability to transform memory is the norm, while the problem in PTSD is that the full brunt of an experience does not fade with time” — Bessel van der Kolk, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Memory
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Beautiful Contradiction: The Concrete Sculpture of Christopher Smith Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2018-03-01 Jodie A. Shull
“I am a sculptor with the nude human figure as my primary subject.” —Chris Smith
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Books are Occasionally Opened Monuments are Seen Every Day: The Polemics of the Confederate Landscape and Its Sculptors Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2017-12-01 Evie Terrono
States is expansive, ideologically charged, and currently contested for its oppressive and suppressive messages, and for its historical evasions and obfuscations that for the first time since its establishment are being broadly exposed and debated. At the time of their creation, Confederate monuments expressed the aspirations of their patrons and their desire to proliferate selective narratives of
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Monument Avenue, Richmond Virginia: Writing History with Bronze and Marble Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2017-12-01 Christopher Graham
to Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, keynote speaker Archer Anderson (an industrialist and Confederate veteran) proclaimed, “let it stand as the embodiment of a brave and virtuous people’s ideal leader.” John Mitchell, Jr., editor of the African American newspaper The Richmond Planet, disagreed. He noted that such veneration “serves to retard progress in the country and forges
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At Least a Tree: The Transformative Material Memory of Efraïm Rodriguez Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2017-09-01 N R Catren
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. —Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. —Chuang Tzu, Zhuangzi
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Gateway to the Wild: Albert Paley's Animals always at the Saint Louis Zoo Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2017-03-01 Sheryl Morang Holmberg
ocean; spans 130 feet, stretching away on both sides from a soaring 36-foot high central arch. More than fifty species of wildlife move through this metal landscape in a way that is both abstract and astonishingly lifelike—a bird perches on an arch of steel vegetation, a python winds its way along a tree trunk, fish swim through watery ribbons of steel. Visitors walk through the archway, where a rhinoceros
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Animal Sculptors: And the Evolution of Zoos Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2017-03-01 Todd Wilkinson
“In wildness is the preservation of the world” (—Henry David Thoreau)
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Gerard Mas: The Enigma of the Face Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-12-01 Katrina Mohn
“I've always … [talked] about the animality of the human being and the humanity of the animals. … I usually work with animals that have no representation in the history of art. … it's a way to recreate a kind of impossible ancient art.” (—Gerard Mas)
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Intersections in Portraiture: Exploring Humanism Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-12-01 NR Catren
“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light.”— Plato, The Republic
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Portrait of Humanity: The Vision of Javier Marín Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-12-01 Jodie A. Shull
Wisdom is neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. —Octavio Paz
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Katsura Funakoshi: Japanese Sculptor's Realistic Pieces with Touches of the Bizarre Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-12-01 Hal Foster
his master’s degree at Tokyo University of the Arts in the late 1970s, abstract sculpture was all the rage. But he and several classmates would have none of it, wanting to be figurative sculptors. That exasperated one of his professors, who one day asked Funakoshi’s group: “Why are you doing figurative sculpture?” Shaking his head over the sacrilege, the professor muttered: “I don’t understand you
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Your “Look” in Time Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-12-01 Giancarlo Biagi
O IN T O F V IE W It was not the carving technique―digital modeling that is about two and a half decades old―that interested me, but what I call “Art and Parentalship” (not only the creator but the situation that precipitated the creation). This portrait was born from a game between friends: Gualtiero Vanelli invited Andrea Bocelli to his marble carving studio and asked if he would like a portrait
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Steely Resolve: Sculptors Working in Steel Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-09-01 Wolfgang Mabry
being until the early twentieth century, its use in sculpture has only been feasible for a relatively short period in history. Early uses in architecture include the stainless steel cladding of the top 288.7 feet of New York City’s briefly tallest skyscraper, the art deco Chrysler Building in 1929, and in sculpture, the monumental Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri in 1965. American abstract expressionist
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Kafka and Metalmorphosis: David Černý's Transformations of Movable Steel Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-09-01 Carol Snyder Halberstadt
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” —Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, 1915.
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A Passionate Vision in Steel: The Art of Marco Cianfanelli Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-09-01 Jodie A. Shull
“There is no passion to be found in playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” —Nelson Mandela
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Folon, Setting Traps to Light Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-06-01 Stéphanie Angelroth
I think that, for each sculpture, there's a place waiting for it, a perfect spot expecting it, because there's a dialogue between that piece of work and that space. —Folon
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Roberto Fabelo's Visionary Madness Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-06-01 Danielle Knafo
various levels of being with eerie precision and symbolic import as he restructures the boundaries between the real and the imagined, treasure and trash, human and animal, angel and demon. As with his graphic art, Fabelo’s sculptural and installation works create a phantasmagorical realm where the tension between the sublime and the grotesque engrosses the viewer in the experience of the uncanny. Freud’s
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The American Art Medal: Staggered and Inspired by the Conceptual, Technical, and Visual Revolution Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-03-01 Bev Mazze
imagery sometimes challenged the viewer to
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The Fascination of Medallic Art: A Distinctive Tactile Narrative Quality Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-03-01 Mashiko
dimensional worlds in one unique visual form, with a distinctive tactile narrative quality. Medals often have both obverse and reverse surfaces, which give their content complexity. They are small enough to be appreciated by the hand, as if one is holding the entire idea of the artist. Medallic sculpture first captured my attention as an artist about thirty years ago. At the time, I had been creating
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Interview with Guest Curator, Eugene Daub Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-03-01 Gordon Alt
G This issue of Sculpture Review features Relief Sculpture. Why is it a unique form of sculpture? ED: Through every major artistic period, relief sculpture has been a well-represented art form and has continued to evolve into the present. Because most relief sculpture before the twentieth century was carved in stone it has often survived the ravages of time. So the voices expressed through this medium
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Narrative: In Contemporary Relief Sculpture Sculpture Review Pub Date : 2016-03-01 Wolfgang Mabry
for thousands of years to narrate without text. Contemporary sculptors have found engaging ways to use new and traditional materials in relief sculptures, to narrate, but to narrate with mystery, touching on subjects that defy facile definition. Ann Cunningham, Amy Kann, Jedediah Morfit, Christopher Smith, Suzanne Storer, and Anthony Visco, are among the many contemporary masters who offer viewers
Contents have been reproduced by permission of the publishers.