Juanjo Novella is an artist who has been linked to public art since the beginning of his career. With 37 years of experience, he has focused on the intersection of urban and social spheres within the realm of public art. Over the years, he has contributed to urban regeneration projects in cities such as Barcelona, Bilbao, and Madrid. Today, Novella …
Huma Bhabha
Huma Bhabha is a Pakistani-American sculptor living and working in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her imposing, fragmented figures draw upon representations of the human form from the Paleolithic to present, generating amalgamations of time and place. She considers the comparisons between found and manmade materials in her work, often using bronze for her large-scale figural sculptures. Bhabha was born in Karachi, …
Beau Kenyon
Beau Kenyon, an Iowa native, is a composer and educator whose nationally exhibited work typically operates in the public sphere and is rooted in principles of collaboration and empathy. Among his many accomplishments, he was the Boston Public Library’s first artist in residence, was the 2019 Mass MOCA Assets for Artists fellow, has worked in national and International residencies, and …
Natalia Zubko
Natalia Zubko is a NYC-based sculptor whose inquiries into ‘intimate minimalism’ seeks to activate forgotten spaces through both studio and public practice. Regularly exhibited in New York City, she also curates Brooklyn’s vital ART LOT public gallery space. Zubko is a lecturer at CUNY and faculty at Parsons New School. Zubko’s work ranges from large, often public, site-responsive environments and …
Cliff Garten
Artist Cliff Garten has completed more than 50 sculptures throughout the U.S. and Canada in collaboration with significant architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering projects. While sought after for creating evocative and nuanced site-specific sculptures within the civic realm, Garten also maintains an independent studio practice creating small-scale sculptures and works on paper. Garten’s artistic approach toward civic sculpture explores the …
Robert Indiana
Robert Indiana was an American Pop artist whose work drew inspiration from signs, billboards, and commercial logos. Indiana defined himself as a “sign painter” because of his preference for iconic images of numbers and letters, often taken from the American signs around him. He became a prominent member of the Pop Art movement. He is best known for his series …
Mabel Landrum Torrey
Mabel Rivers Landrum Torrey was best known for her sculptures of children. A number of her works were inspired by the poetry of Eugene Field. She was born Mabel Rivers Landrum in a sod-roofed house in Sterling, Logan, Colorado on 23 June 1886; she had three siblings. Her father, John Walter Landrum, was a local judge. Her mother was Elizabeth …
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing, China in 1957. An outspoken human rights activist, Ai was arrested by Chinese authorities in April 2011 and held incommunicado for three months. Upon his release, he was prohibited from traveling abroad, engaging in public speech, and was subjected to continued government surveillance. Ai’s position as a provocateur and dissident artist informs the tenor …
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama(草間 彌生), a celebrated avant-garde sculptor, painter and novelist, was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Kusama works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is …
Lajos Héder
Born in Budapest Hungary, Lajos Héder is an environmental artist with a background in architecture and urban design. Throughout his career he has been designing and building public places for inspired community use. He believes that art derives from the specific place where it happens and from common interests in life, death, sunlight, water, sex, food, friendship, stories, etc., not …
Tom Sachs
Contemporary American artist Tom Sachs (born 1966, New York) studied at the Architectural Association in London and received a BA from Bennington College, Vermont. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, and is held in major institutional collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American …
Erin Olson-Douglas
After earning a bachelor of architecture degree from Iowa State University, Erin Olson-Douglas worked at the architecture company Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck in Des Moines, Iowa for five years. She left that firm to study at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where she earned a masters of architecture degree in 2004. She held positions of architect and urban designer …
Calvin “Cal” F. Lewis, FAIA
After growing up among the architectural icons of Chicago, Calvin “Cal” F. Lewis, AIA, began his architectural career in Des Moines, IA at Charles Herbert and Associates. He received his formal architectural education from Iowa State University (ISU) where he graduated in 1970, while also earning All Big-8 Conference recognition in varsity football. From the beginning he displayed a …
Pablo Picasso
Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He was born 25 October 1881 in Málaga, Spain. He died: 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France. Picasso’s artistic career included work as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the …
Troy Corliss
Troy Corliss’ artwork in public spaces is focused on environmentally based art themes. He began his career in the 1990s through a series of internships with public artists in New York and California. He studied at University of California at Davis and earned a B.A. in Studio Art in 1993. Corliss has taught art at St. Michael’s Episcopal Day School, Carmichael in CA, The Craft …
Jon Turner
Jon Turner was born in Ames, Iowa in 1956. Unique public installations in Des Moines by Turner include the design and fabrication of: “Physics Playground” (1993-94) at the former Science Center of Iowa; a pair of Parrott rifle cannon bases (2005) on the Iowa State Capitol grounds; reconstructions (2005-09) of decorative, architectural details at Terrace Hill, the Iowa Governor’s residence.
Coosje van Bruggen
Coosje van Bruggen — an art historian, writer and curator whose professional partnership with her husband, artist Claes Oldenburg, turned ordinary objects into startling monuments around the world. Born to a physician in Groningen, van Bruggen studied history of art at the University of Groningen. From 1967 to 1971, she worked at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. There she worked …
Christian Petersen
Christian Peterson emigrated from Denmark. As a young man, Peterson went to the Newark Technical School to study die cutting. In 1920, he became the apprentice of Boston artist Henry Hudson Kiston, who trained Peterson in a narrative and symbolic sculptural style often used for historic monuments. In the aftermath of World War I, demand for such specialized styles was …
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Arnaldo Pomodoro was born in 1926, in Morciano, Emilia Romagna, Italy. From the mid-1940s until 1957 he served as a consultant for the restoration of public buildings in Pesaro, while studying stage design and working as a goldsmith. In 1954 Pomodoro moved to Milan, where he met artists such as Enrico Baj, Sergio Dangelo, Lucio Fontana, and others. His work …
Andy Goldsworthy
Artist Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire, England, in 1956. He completed his studies at Bradford College of Art (1974-75) and Preston Polytechnic (1975-78). Goldsworthy’s work is about growth and change, the nature and passage of time and the concept that as individuals we all are here for just a moment in time but nature endures. He often creates temporary …
Alice Aycock
ALICE AYCOCK Lea Rosson DeLong, Ph.D., art historian | curator Alice Aycock has been a major international artist for decades, beginning in the 1970s, when she began installing her sculptures throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to her sculpture in Des Moines, Aycock’s works are also found at other airports (such as Kansas City and Philadelphia), including …
David B. Dahlquist
David Dahlquist is a nationally-recognized public artist and teacher. His commissions for private, public, and institutional clients range from tilework and sculpture to major architectural installations. Since 1988, he has completed more than 60 large-scale public commissions across the country. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Art with honors from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Master of Fine …
Ivan Chermayeff
Ivan Chermayeff grew up in a family of architects and artists; his father Serge Chermayeff was a Russian born, British architect and co-founder of several architectural societies, including the American Society of Planners and Architects. His brother, Peter, is a prominent architect. Ivan Chermayeff, called a “environmental pioneer,” is a prominent graphic designer who studied at many noted schools including …
Michael Stutz
Michael Stutz was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After receiving his BFA from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, he attended Ulster Polytechnic in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Stutz later moved to New Orleans where he created his first sculpture designing and building large figures for the Mardi Gras parade. After three years, he moved to San Francisco and worked as a …
James Rosati
James Rosati was a sculptor whose monumental yet precisely crafted geometric works stand in the gardens and plazas of many art museums and corporate headquarters. Born 1911, Washington, PA, Rosati moved to New York in 1944. Rosati was a violinist in his youth. By the 1950s, he was a charter member of the Eight Street Club and the New York School (They …
Norie Sato
Seattle-based artist Norie Sato’s work includes national projects encompassing transit, parks, libraries, universities, infrastructure, airports, and other civic structures. She strives to add meaning and a sense of the human touch to the built environment through her work. She works begin with context-driven ideas, and then she finds the appropriate form and materials, such as sculpture, glass, terrazzo floors, integrated …
jd Hansen
jd Hansen creates art that explores the juxtaposition of vulnerability and strength using the human and animal form. Her work excavates the intricacies of human psychology, non-verbal communication and theories of quantum physics through elongated figures, and subtle use of body language. EDUCATION 1994 BFA Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. With Distinction 2001-2003 Bronze foundry and metal-working classes …
Peter Marasco
Peter Marasco was born in 1931 in a village called Soveria Mannelli, located in southern Italy’s Calabria region. In the 1950’s, Marasco’s father initiated the family’s immigration to Iowa, where Peter’s siblings had already settled with their families. Peter immigrated to the United States in 1956 and was drafted into U. S. Army and served in Germany from 1957-59. Upon …
Jeffrey Abt
Jeffrey Abt is a Professor in the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. He has a BFA degree from Drake University and he studied at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem before completing an MFA at Drake. Abt pursued curatorial and exhibitions work at the Wichita Art Museum, …
Richard Hunt
Richard Hunt is an internationally renowned sculptor. As a public artist, Hunt is known as a creator of abstract metal works, each a unique shrine to the human spirit. He was born September 12, 1935 on Chicago’s South Side. From an early age he was interested in the arts, as his mother was an artist. As a young boy, Hunt …
Jesse Small
Jesse William Arthur Small EDUCATION BFA, Kansas City Art Institute, 1997 MFA, NYSCC at Alfred University, 2005 SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2011 “dESIGN hELL” Nancy Hoffman Gallery, NYC and “Design Hell” Moberg Gallery, Des Moines, Iowa 2010 “Ceramique Contemporaine Biennale Internationale” Vallauris, France and “Twiganatomy” Sherry Leedy, Kansas City, MO 2009 “Xin Sheng Huo (New Life)” First Art Bank, OCAT, Shenzhen, China …
Richard Serra
Richard Serra was born in San Francisco in 1939. After studying at the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Barbara, he graduated in 1961 with a BA in English literature. During this time, he began working in steel mills in order to support himself. In 1964, he graduated from Yale University with both a BFA and an MFA. …
Bruce Nauman
Much of Bruce Nauman’s artwork is characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself in a playful, mischievous manner. There are, however, very serious concerns at the heart of Nauman’s practice. He is fascinated by the nature of communication and language’s inherent problems, as well as the role of the artist as supposed communicator and manipulator of visual symbols.Nauman …
Jesús Bautista Moroles
Jesús Bautista Moroles, known for his abstract granite works, was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1950 and raised in a west Dallas barrio. He dies in Texas at age 64 on June 15, 2015; he lived and worked in Rockport, Texas, where his studio and workshop were based. After receiving his BFA from the University of North Texas, Denton, …
Robert Craig
Robert Craig is Professor of Sculpture, Department of Art and Design at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. Craig holds an M.F.A. from Florida State University-Tallahassee (1988), and a B.A. from Eastern Illinois University-Charleston (1986). Through both municipal sponsorship and private commissions, his large-scale sculptures have been exhibited in museums, universities, and sculpture parks nationally. His work is in numerous collections …
Carl Milles
Carl Milles, original name Wilhelm Carl Emil Andersson (born June 23, 1875, Lagga, near Uppsala, Sweden—died September 19, 1955, Lidingö), was a sculptor known for his expressive and rhythmical large-scale fountains. He was one of Rodin’s assistants in Paris, was well-traveled and influenced by many sources, and he became an American citizen in 1945. His works can be found all …
Jim Campbell
Jim Campbell, born 1956 in Chicago, Illinois, is a contemporary San Francisco based artist who primarily works with LED light installations. Campbell began his artistic career in filmmaking but switched to electronic sculpture in 1990 and started making his iconic LED matrix works in 2000. His work combines film, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and sculptural elements, while he pushes the limits of …
Sally Vagliano Pettus
Sally Vagliano Pettus studied at Sarah Lawrence College and the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States including at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, McNay Art Institute in San Antonio, TX, and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio. Pettus has shown in New York at the Fischbach Gallery, The AM Sachs Gallery, …
Christiane T. Martens
EDUCATION BAE, University of Bonn and Berlin, West Germany, 1962-65; Werkseminar/Art Academy, Dusseldorf, West Germany, 1966-67: MA, MFA, Sculpture, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, 1969-73 PROFESSIONAL University of IL, Professor of Art, School of Art and Design, Champaign, IL, 1981 – Present Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1979-81 South Dakota State University, Brookings SD, 1978-79 Augustana College. Sioux Falls …
Jun Kaneko
Jun Kaneko, born in Nagoya, Japan in 1942, has followed his own path and continually experiments with the technical aspects of the ceramic medium. His enormous dango forms, which range as high as eleven feet, challenge the physical limitations of the material and the firing process. Kaneko’s most recognized sculptural form is the boldly glazed, monumental dango (Japanese for “rounded …
Sarah Grant
Born in Rochester, New York, Sarah Grant grew up in Ames, Iowa. Schooled for three years at Colorado State University, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing and intaglio printmaking in 1976, a Master of Arts degree in intaglio printmaking in 1978, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting in 1980, all …
Christopher Bennett
Christopher Bennett, a native Iowan, specializes in classically rendered sculptures of human figures and animal wildlife. Christopher Bennett has degrees from Luther College, University of Colorado, University of Iowa, and the Naguib School of Sculpture. In 1979, Bennett established a studio in Fairfield, Iowa. He has spent his non studio time teaching, giving lectures and conducting workshops. He has over …
Karl Gerhardt
Gerhardt’s early career was as a machinist working for various foundries and machine tool companies. In 1881 Gerhardt married Harriet Josephine Gloyd, know as “Hattie.” When not working, Gerhardt would purse his hobby of sculpting often using Hattie as his model. Living near the Gerhardt’s, was famed author Samuel Clemens. One day Hattie would pay an unscheduled visit to the …
Siah Armajani
Siah Armajani, an Iranian-born American sculptor, is known for using architectural language and imagery in his conceptual practice. In 1960 he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to attend college. At Macalester College in St. Paul, Armajani studied mathematics and philosophy (primarily the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson) — courses that instilled in him a profound respect for history, democracy and …
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is an American sculptor of Swedish origin, best known for his public art installations typically featuring oversized version of everyday objects. He was born in Stockholm, the son of Gösta Oldenburg and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss. His father was a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York and in 1936 was appointed Consul General of Sweden to Chicago where …
Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall is internationally known for large-scale paintings, sculptures, and other objects that take African- American life and history as their subject matter. Marshall’s art is a complex and compelling one that synthesizes a wide range of pictorial traditions to counter stereotypical representations of black people in society and reassert the place of the black figure within the canon of Western painting. …
STRETCH
Although it may not be immediately evident to one observing his installation, Des Moines Color Field in the Davis Brown Tower on 10th street, the artist who refers to himself only as STRETCH, has long conceived of his art practice to be intimately related to his love of food. Both artmaking and cooking, as STRETCH practices them, are creative, experimental endeavours. From …
Concetta Morales
Concetta Morales received her BS from Skidmore College and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work can be seen at the Iowa Department of Transportation’s Mitchellville Interstate 80 Rest Stop. Concetta came to Iowa to teach at the Des Moines Art Center and begin work as a studio artist. Her career in teaching has expanded …
Luther Utterback
The only child of Ruth Henderickson and Rev. Glenn Lester Utterback, Luther Ellsworth Utterback was born in Texas on July 18, 1947. His family moved to Iowa where his father was the pastor of the famed Little Brown Church in Nashua, Iowa. From an artist statement, published in 1990, he is quoted that by late 1960s “my architectural ideas as …
Ugo Rondinone
Ugo Rondinone was born in 1963 in Brunnen, Switzerland, and lives and works in New York. After first exhibiting in 1985, he attended Vienna’s Hochschule für angewandte Kunst from 1986 to 1990, and came into prominence in Europe in the early 1990’s. Rondinone also represented Switzerland in the Venice Biennial in 2007. Working primarily within an environmental and installation-based context, …
Cork Marcheschi
Louis Cork Marcheschi (born 1945) grew up in Burlingame, California (CA). Known as Cork Marcheschi, he is internationally recognized for his architecturally-scaled public light sculptures that feature soaring modernist forms and jewel-box colors. Marcheschi studied (1968-1970) at the California College of Arts in Oakland, CA, where he earned a MFA in sculpture. He also studied (1966-1968) at California State College, Hayward, CA, and …
Lynn Basa
Chicago-based artist Lynn Basa works in encaustic paint and mosaic to make art for galleries and public spaces. She is the author of the book The Artists Guide to Public Art: How to Find and Win Commissions.
Watson Powell, Jr.
Recognized nationally for his dedication to the insurance industry and his altruistic accomplishments, Watson Powell, Jr. served as chairman, CEO and president of American Republic Insurance Company. His career with American Republic spanned more than 50 years and included founding American Republic Assurance Company in 1968, American Republic Life Insurance Company of New York in 1971, and American Benefit Life …
Deborah Butterfield
Born in San Diego, the same day as the 75th running of the Kentucky Derby, Deborah Butterfield partly credits that birthdate as an inspiration for her subject matter; she has also said that she would have preferred to work in the female form, but that her mentor Manuel Neri dominated that form. Instead, she chose to create self-portraits using images …
Mac Hornecker
Mac Hornecker is best known for sculptures of environmental scale built from a variety of materials. He designs for a particular site, which determines scale and material. Images within his work deal with land and man-made forms. He is interested in the topography, rocks, trees, architecture, and anything interesting about the environment of the site. Hornecker made Iowa his home …
William G. Tucker
William Tucker is a modernist British sculptor and modern art scholar. He was born to English parents in Cairo, Egypt in 1935. In 1937, his family returned to England, where Tucker was raised. He attended the University of Oxford from 1955-58. He continued his sculpture studies at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, where the …
Edward Lee Hendricks
Born in Charleston, West Virginia, Hendricks currently lives in Houston, Texas and The Hamptons. With studios in Houston and New York, sculptor Edward Lee Hendricks has since his first exhibitions in New York and Houston in the early 1980’s, established himself as a nationally important artist who has pioneered the use of movement and balance in his elegantly crafted metal …
Mags Harries
Mags Harries, a native of Wales, attended Leicester College of Art and Design in England and Southern Illinois University. Mags Harries’ public art projects have received national recognition and have won many awards. She observes the small things that, like DNA, reveal all that is important to know about a place. She uses surprise and sometimes humor to energize public places …
Yoshitomo Nara
Since the Japanese pop movement in the 1990s, Yoshitomo Nara has received international acclaim for his distinct figurative style. Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese artist best known for his paintings of children and animals that appear simultaneously sweet and sinister, as seen in his work Do Not Disturb! (1996). A contemporary of Takashi Murakami, Nara has been influenced by popular culture in both Eastern …
Eric Jean-Marie
Born in France in 1960, Eric Jean-Marie was schooled in technical metalwork with a focus on Asian arts and antiques. Inspired by a tour throughout Asia and intensive martial arts study, his early works embrace Zen tenets of minimalism and symmetry. In perhaps Jean-Marie’s “second wave”, he arrived in New York in 1988. While preserving the Zen motif of energy …
Martin Puryear
Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. He began his career in the 1970s alongside other members of the Post-Minimalist generation. Working primarily in wood, he has maintained an unwavering commitment to manual skill and traditional building methods. His sculptures are rich with psychological and intellectual references, examining issues of identity, culture, and history. Puryear is widely celebrated …
Fletcher Benton
Fletcher Benton was born February 25, 1931 in Jackson, Ohio. He was an American sculptor and painter and passed away in 2019 in San Francisco, California. Benton was a pioneer in the burgeoning field of kinetic art , and was celebrated for his large-scale steel abstract geometric sculptures. Benton was a part of the Beatnik movement in San Francisco during …
Michael Pavlovsky
Born in Dover, Delaware, Michael D. Pavlovsky began his lifelong pursuit as a student of painting and sculpture under Patrick Carter. Having earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Landscape Architecture from Texas A & M University in 1982, he was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Texas in 1990. His work has been …