Curt Brill chanced upon sculpture as a means of expression while taking a pottery class at Cornell University. After receiving a B.S. in graphic and product design from the university, he embarked on a career as a sculptor and gained a national reputation for large-scale raku pottery. Since then, Brill has experimented with such varied media as plaster, metal, foam, and telephone wire. In 1980, however, he poured his first bronze and discovered a fascination with the medium that he has since made his own.
Brill's female bronzes are caught in relaxed poses, which the artist rapidly sketches as his models naturally sit, stand, or lie down.
Curt Brill, Dana, bronze, 48 x 32 x 30 inches
He then creates a small-scale model in clay or wax, making sure to retain the immediacy of the original sketches. While he casts bronzes from these original models, Brill is best known for the larger-than-life-size figures that result from scanning the originals to Styrofoam and, from there, working a proportionally accurate model out plaster, clay, or wax. The final results are sculptures stripped of heroism, narrative, and romanticism. This realism, due in part to the artist's experience as a drug rehabilitation counselor and a professional in state-run mental institutions, strives to find the beauty and grace in human imperfections, not in spite of them.
Bill Barrett, Lexicon VIII, Fabricated bronze and stainless steel, 46 x 57 x 36 inches
Over the course of his seven-decade career, Bill Barrett, is considered a leader in the second generation of American metal sculptors. He has developed a personal philosophy that is as concerned with the harmony and balance of seemingly disparate qualities. Barrett enigmatically transforms bronze, steel, and aluminum into graceful and rhapsodic sculptures that often challenge the law of gravity in free-flowing movement.
Barrett is well known for sculptures that range in size between monumental-scale to small tabletop. His large-scale works are found in such notable sculpture parks as the Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey, Pyramid Hill in Ohio, and Runnymede in California.
Barrett is represented in corporate collections such as Neiman-Marcus, Dallas, TX and Hitachi Corporation in Japan, as well as in the museum collections of the Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe, NM; the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; the Utsukushi-ga-Hara Open Air Museum in Tokyo and more.
Others works are installed on dozens of corporate, municipal, and university campuses, most recently at Oklahoma State University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Iowa State University, among others.
“I feel that the artist’s responsibility is to project his own happiness and good will–but not at the expense of the rawness, the incompleteness, the questioning that must be at the core of every true artist’s work. This kind of self-disclosure–the very nakedness of which is universally discomfiting to many–is part of what’s fun about art." - Bill Barrett
Peter Busby, A Oceans Dance, Galvanized steel rod, 124 x 154 x 164 in
(Short Tail Dimensions: 108 x 102 x 130 in, Tall Tail Dimensions: 125 x 118 x 112 in)
Using mostly simple hand tools as well as some welding equipment, Peter Busby molds steel rods into impossibly large animals, giving viewers an opportunity to appreciate them from every angle. He has a months-long process he stands by, from pencil-tracing the formations on drywall to manipulating materials to represent a specific shift of an animal’s head or body. Busby does, however, try to decondition himself from the mechanical pattern-making that can happen when working in a similar style. “It’s actually quite difficult to randomize the form,” he says. In other words, it is easy to get caught up in a routine of making everything symmetrical. “I try not to do that. I prefer the end result with the imperfections.”
Born in Mineola, NY in 1957, Busby attended SUNY Oswego from 78-79, during which he installed a large-scale, permanent sculpture outside the school's administration building. Busby received his first public art commission from the Ryslings School in Nyborg, Denmark, in '86. Since then, Busby has consistently received commissions for large-scale, figurative sculptures and has installed such works throughout the US and Mexico. Among his major public commissions are the Dancing Cranes at the Bronx Zoo in NYC, the Texas Long Horns in Dallas, Texas, and the two life-size elephants in Elephant Greeting at the entrance to the Dallas Zoo, TX.
Joseph McDonnell, Locking Piece IV, Stainless steel, Various sizes
Joseph McDonnell, an American sculptor of renowned acclaim, embarked on his artistic journey with a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious University of Notre Dame. Under the mentorship of the distinguished sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, McDonnell honed his craft, laying the foundation for a career marked by innovation and artistic evolution. His academic pursuits extended to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, and the Harvard School of Design, broadening his artistic horizons.
Over his illustrious career, McDonnell has left an indelible mark with over 150 major commissions for esteemed institutions, corporations, and individuals. His portfolio boasts collaborations with prominent entities such as CBS, IBM, General Electric, Reader's Digest, Dulles Airport, the Milwaukee Public Museum, and the New Jersey State Government. Notably, McDonnell's sculptures grace public spaces, corporate environments, and private collections, showcasing his versatility and widespread appeal.
"Joseph McDonnell is clearly a master of what might be called late modern sculpture cubist/constructivist complexity and an expressionistic sense of drama. Their surface richness suggests a painter’s sensibility—but there is much more to them than their stylistic subtlety. To take a cue from the title of one of his most monumental works, 'The Second Gates of Paradise', they are about faith in the possibility of perfection in an imperfect and unperfectable world. They are about the second coming of paradise after the apocalypse… The paradox of McDonnell’s sculptures is that they seem to be falling apart and coming together simultaneously.” - Donald Kuspit