Category Archives: Sculptors

Episode 19: Jon Gariepy, Nautical Sculptor

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Grow­ing up in Long Beach, Calif.—a port town full of U.S. Navy sailors, the local ship­ping indus­try, and moth­balled World War II ships–left a last­ing impres­sion on ceramic sculp­tor Jon Gariepy.

These days he lives within an hour’s drive of the ocean and the San Fran­cisco Bay, where boat­yards and ships pro­vide mod­els for the work he cre­ates, includ­ing another decay­ing ghost fleet anchored for decades in the Bay Delta.

This artist’s clay ships, boats and sub­marines list to one side and break into pieces.  They rust and run aground, all with an aura of somber nobil­ity.  He says he loves boats and wants to express their “romance.”

Gariepy has exhib­ited through­out Cal­i­for­nia, often near the ocean, and, in Michi­gan, near one of the vast Great Lakes.  He has won sev­eral awards for his work and has shown his work twice at the pres­ti­gious Ceram­ics Annual of America.

Also a painter, Gariepy—naturally—portrays ships and the sea on his large canvases.

Men­tions:  Howard Pease, Cal­i­for­nia Mar­itime Acad­emy, Works & Conversation

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Episode 17: Jesus Sosa Calvo and Stan Peterson, Masters of Wood

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In the vil­lage of San Mar­tin Tilca­jete about 26 miles from the city of Oax­aca, Mex­ico, there is a home stu­dio run by Jesus Sosa Calvo, a mas­ter wood carver of ale­bri­jes, the col­or­ful, fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures for which the state of Oax­aca is known.  Sosa, his brother, sis­ter, daugh­ter and son all work to pro­duce the painted fig­ures, which are often carved from copal, an indige­nous wood.

As with sev­eral vil­lages in the state of Oax­aca, the res­i­dents of San Mar­tin Tilca­jete are known for a par­tic­u­lar craft, in this case ale­bri­jes, which they sell to stores and gal­leries in Oax­aca city and to vis­it­ing tourists.  Sosa’s Zapotec vil­lage is also known for its beau­ti­ful colo­nial church, cer­e­mo­nial and cul­tural tra­di­tions, as well as its prox­im­ity to nearby arche­o­log­i­cal sites, includ­ing Mitla, a pre-Columbian urban cen­ter with carved stone friezes that have influ­enced the designs of regional artisans.

Sosa is one of Mexico’s bet­ter known carvers.  His work has been fea­tured in books about the arts and crafts of Mex­ico and, espe­cially, Oax­aca, an area rec­og­nized through­out the world for its rich crafts tra­di­tion.  He has worked with art stu­dents in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area, both host­ing them at his work­shop and trav­el­ing to the U.S. for artist-in-residence programs.

Stan Peter­son and Sosa share a friend­ship and a love of wood for its capac­ity to por­tray whim­si­cal, evoca­tive fig­ures.  Peter­son, a self-taught wood­carver from Oak­land, Calif., received his B.A. in Fine Art from Port­land State Uni­ver­sity and a M.S. in Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion from West­ern States Col­lege.  His work has been exhib­ited in New York, Cal­i­for­nia, New Mex­ico, Texas and the Pacific North­west, and is included in many pub­lic and pri­vate col­lec­tions, includ­ing the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

“I carve wood sculp­tures, which depict moments when some­thing is about to hap­pen,” writes Peter­son, who has also spent more than 25 years teach­ing wood­work­ing, includ­ing  carv­ing, to the devel­op­men­tally dis­abled.  “These are every­day moments, some­times poignant, some­times with an edge of humor.”

Peter­son first met Sosa in Oax­aca, where the two artists quickly bonded.  In 2012 Peter­son trav­eled to Bali on a foun­da­tion grant to study with a mas­ter carver of tra­di­tional masks.

Men­tions:  Glo­ria Lopez Cordova

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Episode 16: Wanxin Zhang, Ceramic Sculptor

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In this short video Sculpt­cast Con­ver­sa­tions presents Wanxin Zhang, a San Fran­cisco sculp­tor who was born in China and stud­ied at the LuXun Acad­emy of Fine Arts before emi­grat­ing to the U.S.  He’s best known for his some­times humor­ous, some­times polit­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of the famous ter­ra­cotta war­riors from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor. Zhang’s work is rep­re­sented in numer­ous pub­lic and pri­vate col­lec­tions both nation­ally and internationally.

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Episode 15: Fletcher Benton, Sculptor

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When Fletcher Ben­ton was 10, his mother rec­og­nized in her son a real tal­ent for art.  So she hired a teacher and turned over to the boy a key to a room that became his own pri­vate studio.

Benton’s early instruc­tion and inter­est stuck fast.  He grad­u­ated from Miami Uni­ver­sity in Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts.  After his World War II ser­vice he headed for North Beach in San Fran­cisco, where he immersed him­self in the emerg­ing Beat Move­ment.  He worked as a sign painter by day and an abstract painter by night before land­ing a job teach­ing at the San Fran­cisco Art Insti­tute.  Ben­ton later moved on to a pro­fes­sor­ship at San Jose State Uni­ver­sity, from which he retired in 1986.

In the 1960s he aban­doned paint­ing and began exper­i­ment­ing with kinetic art—completely unaware that it was on the verge of explod­ing into the art scene.  A chance con­nec­tion launched Benton’s sculp­ture career, and he worked as a one of the world’s best-known kinetic artists for 13 years.  By the late 1970s, how­ever, he was fin­ished with kinetic art.  He turned instead to more tra­di­tional bronze and steel sculp­ture that empha­sized geo­met­ric shapes along with let­ters and num­bers pre­sented with pre­ci­sion of form and finish.

At nearly 82, Ben­ton still works four days a week with his three assis­tants in his 15,000-square-foot San Fran­cisco stu­dio that includes a large bright room for paint­ing and his col­lec­tion of mod­els trains on a track that cir­cles the ceiling.

Benton’s sculp­ture is installed around the world and appears in sev­eral col­lec­tions, includ­ing the Hir­sh­horn Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­den, Whit­ney Museum of Amer­i­can Art, San Fran­cisco Museum of Mod­ern Art, Den­ver Art Museum as well as the DeCor­dova Museum and Sculp­ture Park in Massachusetts.

Men­tions:  Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, David Park, Joan Brown

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photo copy­right 1965–2012 Fletcher Benton/Artists Rights Society

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Episode 13: Ellen Driscoll, Public and Installation Artist

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For six weeks in 2011 a flotilla of white plas­tic called “Dis­tant Mir­rors” rocked on the tides of the Prov­i­dence River in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island.  Ellen Driscoll, head of the sculp­ture depart­ment at the Rhode Island School of Design and an estab­lished sculp­tor in the reclaimed mate­ri­als move­ment, glued and then stitched this instal­la­tion in the shape of islands and the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent.  Given its ori­gins, the piece showed sur­pris­ing beauty both by day and night.

Driscoll says she “explores resource con­sump­tion and mate­r­ial lin­eage,” using castoff mate­ri­als like plas­tic bot­tles com­pressed into a block by the Rhode Island Resource and Recov­ery Asso­ci­a­tion — only a tiny por­tion of this small state’s mas­sive waste stream. For the past five years these dis­carded plas­tics have served as her pri­mary mate­r­ial for sculpture.

Her work is included in numer­ous major pri­vate and pub­lic col­lec­tions, includ­ing the Whit­ney Museum and Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art.  Driscoll has cre­ated numer­ous pieces of pub­lic art, among them 20 mosaic and glass works for three of New York’s Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion tun­nels and a kinetic sculp­ture for the South Boston Mar­itime Park.

She has been awarded fel­low­ships from the Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion, the National Endow­ment for the Arts, the New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts and oth­ers.  Driscoll earned a BA in Fine Arts from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity and MFA in Sculp­ture from Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity.  Her work is included in such major col­lec­tions as the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art and the Whit­ney Museum of Art.

Men­tions: Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Barn­aby Evans, Water­Fire Prov­i­dence, Eliz­a­beth King, Andy Ness, Mar­tin Puryear, Joseph Beuys

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Episode 12: Bruce Wolfe, Figurative Sculptor

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Click for a bonus video show­ing Wolfe at work in his studio.

Bruce Wolfe’s sculp­ture career spans more than four decades.  He spe­cial­izes in fig­u­ra­tive por­traits and has ren­dered works of such notable pub­lic fig­ures as for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatcher, the late U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tive and civil rights activist Bar­bara Jor­dan, for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State George Schultz, for­mer Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice William Rehn­quist and leg­endary boxer Muham­mad Ali.  For Thatcher’s statue, Wolfe trav­eled to Eng­land to sit with the the grande dame of British pol­i­tics and take pho­tos and measurements.

He stud­ied art at San Jose State Uni­ver­sity and the San Fran­cisco Art Insti­tute.  Start­ing his career as an art direc­tor for a big adver­tis­ing firm in San Fran­cisco, Wolfe even­tu­ally turned to illus­tra­tion and went out on his own.  One of his first sculp­ture com­mis­sions was of Kurt Adler, music direc­tor of the San Fran­cisco Opera.

Wolfe has sculpted works that con­vey the per­son­al­i­ties of may­ors, city founders, col­lege pres­i­dents,  major donors, col­lege coaches, notable ath­letes, an opera direc­tors, med­ical pio­neers, and reli­gious fig­ures.  They stand, they con­tem­plate, they sit, they observe in ways com­pletely char­ac­ter­is­tic to the per­son represented.

Four of Wolfe’s 7-foot bronze fig­ures can be found in niches of the his­toric chapel at the Old Mis­sion in Santa Bar­bara rep­re­sent­ing St. Clare, St. Fran­cis, Mary Mag­da­lene and Christ.  His 9-foot statue of bas­ket­ball great Magic John­son is located at Michi­gan State University.

For each of his fig­ures Wolfe researches exact dress and man­ner­isms, going so far as to col­lect cloth­ing, jew­elry and other items as well as vis­it­ing his subject’s home and work­place to ensure a wholly accu­rate pre­sen­ta­tion.  He starts work in clay, using the fin­ished piece to cre­ate the mold for a bronze pour, then com­plet­ing the project with a patina finish.

Men­tions:  Richard McDon­ald, Lamar Hunt, Mario Lemieux, Art­works Foundry, Gladding McBean, George Shultz, Nor­man Shumway, Edgar Odell Lovette, Frank Gehry, John Han­nah

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Episode 11: Brian Dettmer, Book Sculptor

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Brian Dettmer takes ana­log media — old instruc­tional books, art books, sci­ence and engi­neer­ing books, his­tory books, comic books, med­ical texts, dic­tio­nar­ies, ency­clo­pe­dias, maps, cas­sette tapes — and with an X-Acto knife and hun­dreds of razor-sharp blades turns them into detailed and extrav­a­gantly lay­ered sculp­tural works.

At Colum­bia Col­lege in Chicago, Dettmer orig­i­nally focused on paint­ing.  But after grad­u­at­ing in 1997 he worked in graphic design and sig­nage.  Three years later he started tear­ing, cut­ting, frag­ment­ing and glu­ing books, the medium that has earned him an inter­na­tional reputation.

Dettmer’s work has been shown in Slove­nia, the Nether­lands, Spain, Eng­land, Canada, Ger­many, Mex­ico and through­out the United States, includ­ing solo shows in New York, Chicago, Miami, San Fran­cisco, Atlanta and Barcelona.  He has also been fea­tured in the CBS Evening News, The New York Times, The Guardian in the United King­dom, Wired, National Pub­lic Media and more.

An exhi­bi­tion of Dettmer’s work will open Oct. 20, 2012 and run through Jan. 5, 2913 at The Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Art of Geor­gia in Atlanta.

Men­tions:  Doug Beube, Tom Fried­man

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Episode 8: Marvin Lipofsky, Glass Sculptor

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Mar­vin Lipof­sky is con­sid­ered a cen­tral fig­ure in the devel­op­ment of the Amer­i­can Stu­dio Glass Move­ment.  In the early 1960s he worked under Stu­dio Glass founder Har­vey Lit­tle­ton and five other stu­dents at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin in Madi­son then brought these new ideas to Cal­i­for­nia, where he taught at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, and Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts and Crafts (now Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts), estab­lish­ing that school’s glass program.

He earned his BFA from the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois then an MS and MFA in sculp­ture from the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin.  He has also taught sem­i­nars and work­shops at numer­ous arts and crafts schools, includ­ing Haystack Moun­tain School of Crafts in Maine, Beza­lel Acad­emy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Israel, and the Pilchuck Glass School in Wash­ing­ton.  As a vis­it­ing artist, Lipof­sky has trav­eled to Spain, France, Bul­garia, Swe­den, Fin­land, Japan and the Nether­lands.  He was one of the first Amer­i­can glass artists to travel to Czecho­slo­va­kia, a coun­try whose stu­dio glass move­ment launched in the 1950s.

Lipof­sky has received many hon­ors for his work, includ­ing a Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the Art Alliance for Con­tem­po­rary Glass in Chicago and a Mas­ters of the Medium Award from the James Ren­wick Alliance, Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.  He was also named an Hon­orary Life­time Mem­ber of the Glass Art Soci­ety, an orga­ni­za­tion he founded, a Cal­i­for­nia Liv­ing Trea­sure and a recip­i­ent of two National Endow­ment for the Arts grants.

His work is rep­re­sented in the col­lec­tions of the Corn­ing Museum of Glass, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art in New York City,  Los Ange­les County Museum of Art, Oak­land Museum of Cal­i­for­nia, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Philadel­phia Museum of Art, Glas­museet Ebeltoft in Den­mark, Museum Bell­rive in Zurich, Switzer­land, Museum Boji­mans Van Beunin­gen in the Nether­lands, National Museum of Mod­ern Art in Kyoto, and Hokkaido Museum of Mod­ern Art in Sap­poro, Japan.

Lipof­sky works from his stu­dio in Berke­ley, Calif.

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Episode 7: Tom Franco and Julia Lazar, the Firehouse Collaborative

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They’re a team in life, art and com­mu­nity build­ing.  Tom Franco and Julia Lazar are the co-directors and force behind the Fire­house Col­lab­o­ra­tive, a Berke­ley, Calif., non-profit that pro­vides space for local artists to live, work, sell, per­form and celebrate.

Franco, the mid­dle son of three from a highly cre­ative fam­ily (his broth­ers James and David are Hol­ly­wood actors, his mother is a writer and his father was an artist), is a sculp­tor who works with found objects.  Lazar, a for­mer chef from Aus­tria, is the food, design and visual cre­ator behind the col­lab­o­ra­tive, which will soon mar­ket a line of her custom-brewed kom­bucha, an effer­ves­cent fer­mented bev­er­age known for its health benefits.

Cur­rently, the Fire­house Col­lab­o­ra­tive oper­ates six loca­tions in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area that include three gal­leries, three micro store­fronts and a bazaar, four groups of stu­dio space, and two groups of shared apart­ments.  Add to that mix paint­ing and draw­ing groups, an edi­ble gar­den, a print shop, ceramic stu­dio, record­ing stu­dios, glass shop and wood shop plus social events and per­for­mance space for rent.

In terms of sculp­ture, Franco, a grad­u­ate of Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts in Oak­land, Calif., col­lects every­day, dis­carded objects and then applies glue and brightly col­ored house paint, deliv­er­ing his mes­sage about the detri­tus of con­sumer cul­ture in which we’re all steeped.  He says his pri­mary art influ­ences are sculp­tors William D. Iac­ulla and Nancy Graves.

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