About The Artist, Bruce Papitto
I began making figure sculpture 25 years ago and have a large and still growing body of work. My figure sculptures are about bonds... to each other, to ideals... and about protection. The figures are usually in action. The physical motion gives the sculptures an aliveness and lends an urgency to what I am trying to communicate.
I’ve also created 3 large-scale public sculptures in bronze. A nine foot tall Revolutionary War Minuteman, “The Patriot”, in Bedford, Massachusetts is racing toward the battle at the Concord Bridge carrying the Bedford Flag; my “U.S. Senator John Chafee” portrait-figure strides towards the Narragansett Bay in the park he created in Bristol, Rhode Island; the first casting of “The Bell Keepers” leans into a storm in Alameda, New Mexico while a second casting has made its way into the collection of Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, Colorado.
METHOD: At the start of my career my method was to create spontaneous sketches directly in clay and then use them as reference for the finished sculptures. Now I start with sessions of free charcoal drawing using fat charcoal on big sheets of paper which become a store of ideas for my sculptures. I don't sculpt from the live model, preferring to more freely interpret gesture and form to make, not sculptures of figures, but sculptures of ideas expressed through figures. I model the sculpture in clay and then either kiln-fire it in my studio, make a casting in Ultracal (a durable industrial-grade plaster), or carry it through the bronze casting process at foundries here in the U.S. And some of my work exists in all three medium, ceramic, Ultracal, as well as bronze.
EARLY TRAINING: My early training was at the Lyme Academy of Fine Art in Connecticut where I studied portraiture with Elisabeth Gordan Chandler and figure sculpting with Laci DeGerenday. Early study also included informal but not less intense training with sculptor Merlin Szosz, then Professor of Design at Rhode Island School of Design. It all began, I suppose, much earlier on with the childhood admiration I had for a great
painter, my cousin, Vincent Castagnacci, www.castagnacci.com Professor Emeritus of Fine Art, University of Michigan.
VISIT THE STUDIO: I live here in the S.F. Bay Area with my wife, Amei, a teacher and wonderful painter, www.ameiart.com , and our three children. Together and individually they are the inspiration for all my work.
Bruce in front of the full size installation of The Bell Keepers in Alameda, New Mexico.