Sculpture by Sandy Kaplan
My blogs
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Industry | Arts |
| Occupation | Artist/Sculptor |
| Location | St. Louis, MO |
| Introduction | I began working with clay in 1989 in the ceramics studio at Craft Alliance. I make sculptures, vessel forms and hand built platters in terra cotta which I then paint in a range of colored glazes. The frieze of figures on my vessels and in the center of my platters are women and men relating to each other, in conversation, or else dancing, while showing friendship, affection and love. In my work the figures emerge into three-dimensional space, entering just a bit into our world. I've been making reference to Reginald Marsh and Thomas Hart Benton's work in my vessels, depicting people clustered together in "New York style" street scenes of night life from the 1930s. In more recent work, "T.O.U.C.H.-ing (Together our unity creates happiness)" and "Wall-flower," I place figures emerging from the interior to enhance the narrative of the vessel. "A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou" is a sculptural piece of men and women socializing in a restaurant bar. In all of my work the individual figure and the ways of relating multiple figures express my deepest feelings toward human emotion. For more information, contact Sandy Kaplan at sandyk@prodigy.net |
| Interests | I've been a full-time artist since 2011 after a career in institutional development, but I have been steadily active in the St. Louis art community for over twenty-five years including being selected for inclusion in "TRADITION!" a curatorial project by Buzz Spector at the Regional Arts Commission Gallery in 2012. In "Writers' Round Table," a gathering of famous authors of American literature, I have placed an architectural form into the vessel so that it looms over the encircling figures. I also participated in three local juried exhibits over the past year: June, 2014 Craft Alliance - "Work from the Studio;" November, 2014 Art Saint Louis "Exhibition XXX;" and January, 2015 Craft Alliance - "Designated Areas" as well as exhibited at SOFA 2014 Chicago represented by Ann Nathan Gallery.and SOFA 2017 and 2018 with Gallery Victor Armendariz. The themes on my vessels and sculptures vary as that is part of my creative process and visualization of an idea. I want my art to evoke something of the complex beauty of human relationships, using the vessel itself as a metaphor of community. I've been making reference to Reginald Marsh and Thomas Hart Benton's work in my vessels, depicting people clustered together in "New York style" street scenes of night life from the 1930s. In a commissioned work, "Eugene "O'Neill and the Women in His Life," I made glazed terra cotta portraits of the playwright and his most important relationships. In "Picasso and His Muses," I sculpted a bust of Picasso with a vessel depicting the six most influential women in his life with one of his paintings of each of them. "Leonard Bernstein Conducting West Side Story" is my most recent sculpture. For Selected Bibliography and further information, contact Sandy Kaplan at sandyk@prodigy.net |