Sculpture
I first started studying clay sculpture in the early 1990’s after hearing about Old Church Cultural Center, in Demarest New Jersey, from Jerry Cetrulo. Jerry studied with Sculptor Janice Mauro and after seeing some of his work, and having had the urge for some time to try sculpture, I called and signed up for my first sculpture lesson. I remember my first day at sculpture class very well. After about 20 minutes I remember saying to myself, “what the hell are you doing here?” Having worked with wood, which is subtractive, for many years, making the transition to clay was overwhelming to say the least. I stuck it out and after several more classes, I started to feel as though this might be something I could do. Janice is an excellent instructor, working exclusively in wet clay. She would break up the three hour class by dragging out the skeleton and life model, and lecture on anatomy and proportion. This was my first introduction to true life sculpture and I loved it. I studied with Janice for most of the 90’s.
Jerry and I had been wanting to branch out from sculpting in wet clay, to try our hand in plastilene. Janice, unfortunately, did not teach sculpture using armatures and plastilene and we started putting the feelers out for another sculptor, who specialized in this type of sculpture. We had heard about a sculptor by the name of Michael Shacham, and decided to attend one of his sculpture classes at the Morris Art Association, in Morristown, NJ. Michael is an expert in working in plastilene, and is very strong anatomically. I learned everything I now know about sculpture using this medium from Michael. After learning to work in the medium, I had Mike teach me the finer points of mold making, which I found to be very easy, as long as you have Michael do it for you. To enhance my study of life sculpture with Mike, I supplemented my life studies with Anatomy Classes with David Klass, in NYC. I’ve taken his full body ecorche, his portrait ecorche, and his equine ecorche classes at his studio in Chelsea.
Please enjoy browsing through my sculpture gallery. I hope you have as much fun looking at it as I did creating it.
