Norman Mercer

“Amethyst Acrylic Sculpture”

Circa 1990

Original hand cast bronze dual figure of a hollow dressed torso of a male and female representing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The bronze sculpture is attributed to the American sculptor Judith Shea. This piece is a maquette for a life size bronze executed by this artist that is located in an outdoor space in Buffalo, New York. Both are titled “Eden” and were done in 1987. Condition is excellent. Unsigned. Label on the bottom of the thick pine base states the artist and title of the artwork. Provenance: A Long Island, New York collector. Judith Shea has been a notable presence in the New York art world since the 1970s. Trained as a designer at Parsons, she soon found the fashion industry too restrictive and abandoned it in favor of making art. For her first solo show, at The Clocktower in 1976, Shea made a work based on color theory, using transparent silks in a spectrum of colors, worn by a live model. Other early work referenced clothing and its construction, first as flat, minimalist pattern and later as molded draping over implied, absent figures. In the 1981 Whitney Biennial, Shea showed three simple forms that evoked iconic clothes of the 1950s and 60s—the overcoat and the simple sheath dress—which hung from the wall as if on hangers. Five related works were included in the Hirshhorn’s Directions 83 survey. All of these works evoke human presence, felt as absence, as if the clothes were placeholders for missing persons. Thinking about her earlier clothes-based works, Shea has said that she “was looking for characters, for personae, really, to occupy them. I used clothes as stand-ins for people.” With the support of NEA grants, Shea began to learn bronze casting, and she was able to also spend time in Paris studying the statuary of its parks and gardens. This research led to several hollow-figure compositions from the 1980s that were designed to be sited in public spaces, such as Eden (John Hancock Tower, Chicago), Shepherd’s Muse (Oliver Ranch), Shield (Sheldon Museum of Art), and Without Words (Walker Art Center). In the 1990s, after a residency at Chesterwood—the site of Daniel Chester French’s studio in Stockbridge—Shea began to use woodcarving to make monumental public sculpture. The first of these full-scale wooden figures were shown in 1992 at the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris in New York. In 1994 her wooden equestrian statue The Other Monument, a monumental image of a black man on a black horse, was installed at Doris Freedman Plaza in New York, in the same plaza as the William Tecumseh Sherman...

Original terracotta sculpture by the American sculptor William Huppert. Titled “Expecting”. Circa 1960. Post Modern. Overall height 18 inches including base. Base is 6 wide by 5.25 ...

Here for your consideration is an original beautifully patinated solid bronze standing female nude by the Bulgarian/American artist, Ana Ranguel Daltchev. Incised artist signature o...

Oil on canvas painting by the Polish born artist, Ernest Kosmowski. The painting is done with palette knife and brush typical of his style and children theme in the 1960’s. Soft, pa...

This Mixed Media piece titled "Lick" is an original artwork by Roxana Azar made of a laser-cut acrylic. The piece measures approx. 27”h x 22”w x 1”d. Rox...

This Mixed Media piece titled "Fern Spiral Series 1" is an original artwork by Roxana Azar made of an etched fluorescent acrylic. The piece measures 6.25”h x 7”w x 2”d. Roxana Azar...

This Mixed Media piece titled "Starflower Series 3" is an original artwork by Roxana Azar made of a digital print on acrylic. The piece measures approx. 5.25”h x 5”w. Roxana Azar’s...

This Mixed Media piece titled "Squiggly Leaf" is an original artwork by Roxana Azar made of a digital print on acrylic. The piece measures approx. 23”h x 14”w x 1”d and is hand-signe...