042 http://www.AmericanArtCollector.com
SPECIAL SECTION /THE FIGURE IN ART
sculpture of Karen LaMonte.
LaMonte casts dresses in glass, an accomplishment
her glass studio collaborators in the Czech Republic
initially called impossible. She sought to make a
“figurative representation that was not literal.” She
frequented Czech thrift shops and bought dresses that
expressed not only beauty and fine craftsmanship but
a connection to periods of history. The sleek, elegant
modernism of the period between the wars is captured
in Deco Dress Impression, 2006. Her first casts were
solid and she knew immediately she wanted to
work with the absence of the body, addressing “the
interplay between the inner layer of the body (the
individual) and the exterior layer of the clothing,
which is society.”
Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994) merged
the inner and the outer in many of his sculptures,
especially in Reverie, 1981. The figures, a mother and
child, become one with the blanket wrapped around
them, only their faces emerging from the sensual
curves of bronze.
Houser said, “I work with clay and pull it around
and see what I can do with experimental forms. When3
Allan Houser
(1914-1994), Reverie,
1981, bronze, ed. of 10,
24½ x 23 x 12½". ©Estate
of Allan Houser/Artists
Rights Society (ARS),
New York. Photograph
courtesy ©Glenn Green
Galleries, Scottsdale,
Arizona, and Santa Fe-
Tesuque, New Mexico.4
Karen LaMonte, Deco
Dress Impression, 2006,
cast glass, 59 x 24 x 20½".
Courtesy the artist.5
Augustus Saint-
Gaudens (1848-1907),
Adams Memorial,
modeled 1886-1891,
cast 1969, bronze,
697/8 x 397/8 x 44½".
Smithsonian American
Art Museum,
Washington, D.C.6
Kevin Francis Gray,
Temporal Sitter, 2011,
Carrara marble,
94 x 60 x 60 cm.
Courtesy Kevin Francis
Gray Studio ©2016.
Photo by Tara Moore.34 5