Three Sculptors

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Nancy Azara: Detail of Broken Red leaves, shown in full below

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In this post you see the work of three sculptors, each working in wood and each with a solo show up now: Nancy Azara, Donna Dodson and Ursula Von Ridingsvard. Formally and esthetically the three approach their material differently, but there’s a sensense of humanity, if not spirituality, present in each artist's work.

Nancy Azara’s show, Dawn/Light: Sculpture and Collages, is at Andre Zarre Gallery on 20th Street in Chelsea until the 27th (don’t miss it). Her handcarved works, suggesting totems or altars, give form to a spiritual sensibility. Lilly Wei writes in the catalog accompanying the exhibition: “A feminist and spiritualist whose production is a testament to memories and desires, to landscapes of the mind and soul with reference to nature and the architectural, Azara seems to transfer her own passionate convictions, her own breath of life into her constructs.” You do not walk away from this work without carrying an intangible part of it with you.

Broken Red Leaves, installed at Andre Zarre Gallery

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Altar for Nunzia: 1913-2004
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Azara with Dawn/Light

All the sculptures are carved, painted and gilded with various metal leafs

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Donna Dodson’s stylized and abstracted elephants are anthropomorphized into archetypes of the feminine: girl, woman, goddess or queen. “My artwork celebrates the mystical relationship between human beings and the animal kingdom," says Dodson. "The challenge is to fuse feminine sensuality, sexuality and soul with a well-proportioned figurative vocabulary." Her solo, Elephant Tribe took place at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, in Boston, in November, but if you’re in New England, you can see a new show at the Galletly Gallery in New Hampton, New Hampshire, which opens April 1 and runs for the month..

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Donna Dodson:

Elephant Bride, left, and White Elephant, two sculptures from the installation at the Boston Sculptor's Gallery, Boston, in November shown below
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Ursula Von Rydingsvard: Blackened Word, cedar and graphite, installed at Galerie Lelong on 26th Street
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Ursula Von Rydingsvard's handsome solo, Erratus, is at Galerie Lelong on 26th Street through May 1. Von Rydingsvard’s hewn cedar sculptures are massive and monumental. They are constructed from smaller elements that have been built into unfurling and undulating forms—and then, if I see correctly from her website—are cut up before being reconstructed. The work is too constrained in a gallery setting; it needs to be outdoors, where it has a more elemental relationship with its surroundings. Rydingsvard the organic Serra. Wait. Let me restate that: He’s the ferric Von Rydingsvard.
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Above and below: Details of Blackened Word
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Droga, cedar and graphite
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