American Sculptors

Regarding the fairly long established, paid-listing chiefly American sculptor directory that is sculptor.org. I only perused the right-hand column of the thousands of sculptors who have joined. As I have certain criteria of sympathy, or comprehension, I listed very few names as favourites or somehow note-worthy, and in fact note the complete distance between american sculpture, and, say, french sculpture as listed on their similar sites.

I was much impressed by west-coast feline sculptor Gwynn Murrill, for the monumentality, that is, the calm and timelssness. The cubist stonecarver Michael Ernst I consider of extreme 3D integrity, though he is still young, and his series of 'hands' are most impressive. The perhaps buddhist artist calling himself Dogen, and thereby as this is a Zen term, making himself rather invisible, caught my attention as much by his verbal honesty as his ambitious life-sized glass figurative works. Others who began to persuade me were Terry S Mollo, Patrick McCartney, Sharon Lopez, Patrick Johnson and Evert Fornas. These sculptors exhibited figuration tending towards placid and thus monumental observation.

Other figurative artists so often seem to repent of being figurative and wish to inject their work into the air, and some flight, or, they tend to excessive movement that weakens by that over-ambition. They are not content with form and either reach for rhetoric, by implying some intent, or simply desire their forms to impress through movement alone.

Robert Holmes reflects Moore/McWilliam and Butler-isms, Lopez seems to know of Giacommetti, but of those others who tend to this my dislike against excess of movement, come Liu Jilin, Kolozsy, Jitkoff and William Duffy. In all it is remarkable that figuration is generally subordinate to a 'polemical' tendency, either as pseudo mytholical or barely self-conscious component for agglomeration within a greater concept, as with the totemism or fetish makers. It is noticeable that, given such as the indigenous Hopi sculptural tradition, that no indigenous artist appears, amongst many I perused, nor even with this last tendency were any creations evidently more benefiting from that tradition than, say, the african or polynesian. And, perhpas a sign of american cultural life, or not, the absence of any african-american artists is remarkable.

The thousands of others serve to give a real view of the state of modern sculpture in america, though one has to imagine that very many artists did not pin their works to this particular internet board. The styles visible are extremely various yet evidently spring from american sculptural education, and, in informal terms, include the following un-ordered compendium of modern american sculptural practise:

Assemblists
Constructivists
Figurative 'exceeders'
Stone discoverers, virginals for their excitement in the material satisfies them
Conceptualists, some of colorist bent, some more Minimalist
Modelling abandoners, who expressly halt before form assumes recognisability
Post- surrealist Doll fetishist totem -ists
Fret -ists, of 2D bent
Slug / Snake admirers, whose love for the activity of carving exceeds their taste
Mobile -ists
Pop art -ists , bordering on puzzle deconstructivists
Megalith Spire Column -ists
Portcullis- ists
Wire- ists
Panel -ists
Found rock -ists
Hindu- ists
Cubist precolumbian -ists
Srapyard -ists
Boiler pipe -ists
Fossile -ists
Tent ists
Globe -ists
Vegas tongue in cheek -ists
Wicker -ists
Falling dice -ists
Curve -ists
Fence -ists
Wheel -ists
Grid -ists
Hive -ists
Machine -ists
Suspended tank -ists
Box with contents -ists
Architecture -ists
Un-coiled Spring -ists
Vorticists
Mosaic -ists
Chain -ists
Organic -ists
Shell -ists
Fabric -ists
Americana -ists