Bruce Wolfe

Last updated

Bruce Wolfe (1941 - 2023) [1] was an American sculptor, artist, illustrator, and designer, known for producing sculptures of and for many notable figures. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "the top sculptor for hire in the Bay Area, and maybe the nation". [2] Within his forty-year career he created sculptures and busts of Barbara Jordan, Margaret Thatcher, former mayor Ilus W. Davis of Kansas City, former Secretary of State George Shultz, Norman Shumway, and former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. [3] [4]

Wolfe resided in Northern California for most of his life. He studied art at the San Jose State University and the San Francisco Art Institute. He taught painting and sculpture, at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland California.

He was also credited with creating a theatrical poster for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. [5]

His work has been exhibited across New York, California, Paris, and at the Smithsonian. His awards include a CLIO, Endowment of Arts Federal Achievement Award, First Place at the Art of the Portrait Conference 2001, a Joseph Henniger Award, Zellerbach and Foster & Kleiser Awards. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco Art Institute</span> Former art school in San Francisco, California

San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately 220 undergraduates and 112 graduate students were enrolled in 2021. The institution was accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), and was a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD). The school closed permanently in July 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bohemian Club</span> Private gentlemens club in California, United States

The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California, and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists, and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the club has a membership of many local and global leaders, ranging from artists and musicians to businessmen. Membership is restricted to men only.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wah Chang</span> American designer (1917–2003)

Wah Ming Chang was an American designer, sculptor, and artist. With the encouragement of his adoptive father, James Blanding Sloan, he began exhibiting his prints and watercolors at the age of seven to highly favorable reviews. Chang worked with Sloan on several theatre productions and in the 1940s, they briefly created their own studio to produce films. He is known later in life for his sculpture and the props he designed for Star Trek: The Original Series, including the tricorder and communicator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beniamino Bufano</span> American sculptor

Beniamino "Bene" Bufano was an Italian American sculptor, best known for his large-scale monuments representing peace and his modernist work often featured smoothly rounded animals and relatively simple shapes. He worked in ceramics, stone, stainless steel, and mosaic, and sometimes combined two or more of these media, and some of his works are cast stone replicas. He had a variety of names used and sometimes went by the name Benvenuto Bufano because he admired Benvenuto Cellini. His youthful nickname was "Bene", which was often anglicized into "Benny". He lived in Northern California for much of his career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark di Suvero</span> American sculptor (born 1933)

Marco Polo di Suvero, better known as Mark di Suvero, is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Neri</span> American sculptor (1930–2021)

Manuel John Neri Jr. was an American sculptor who is recognized for his life-size figurative sculptures in plaster, bronze, and marble. In Neri's work with the figure, he conveys an emotional inner state that is revealed through body language and gesture. Since 1965 his studio was in Benicia, California; in 1981 he purchased a studio in Carrara, Italy, for working in marble. Over four decades, beginning in the early 1970s, Neri worked primarily with the same model, Mary Julia Klimenko, creating drawings and sculptures that merge contemporary concerns with Modernist sculptural forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Porter</span> American artist

Bruce Porter was an American painter, sculptor, stained-glass designer, writer, muralist, landscape designer, and art critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen De Staebler</span> American sculptor, printmaker, and educator (1933 - 2011)

Stephen De Staebler was an American sculptor, printmaker, and educator, he was best recognized for his work in clay and bronze. Totemic and fragmented in form, De Staebler's figurative sculptures call forth the many contingencies of the human condition, such as resiliency and fragility, growth and decay, earthly boundedness and the possibility for spiritual transcendence. An important figure in the California Clay Movement, he is credited with "sustaining the figurative tradition in post-World War II decades when the relevance and even possibility of embracing the human figure seemed problematic at best."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene Daub</span> American contemporary figure sculptor

Eugene Daub is an American contemporary figure sculptor, best known for his portraits and figurative monument sculpture created in the classic heroic style. His sculptures reside in three of the nation's state capitals and in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. His work appears in public monuments and permanent collections in the United States and Europe.

Dana King is an American broadcast journalist and sculptor. She served as an anchor for the CBS owned-and-operated station KPIX-TV in San Francisco. In 2012, King left KPIX to pursue her passion in sculpting and art. Her outdoor sculpture commemorating the Montgomery bus boycott is displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. King uses historically generalized and racist ideas that requires indepth researches, to provide information on the normative misrepresentation of Black peoples' emotional and physical sacrifices.

Bruce Beasley is an American abstract expressionist sculptor born in Los Angeles and currently living and working in Oakland, California. He attended Dartmouth College from 1957–59, and the University of California, Berkeley from 1959-62 where he earned his BA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Putnam</span> American artist

Arthur Putnam was an American sculptor and animalier who was recognized for his bronze sculptures of wild animals. Some of his artworks are public monuments. He was a well-known figure, both statewide and nationally, during the time he lived in California. Putnam was regarded as an artistic genius in San Francisco and his life was chronicled in the San Francisco and East Bay newspapers. He won a gold medal at the 1915 San Francisco world's fair, officially known as the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, and was responsible for large sculptural works that stand in San Francisco and San Diego. Putnam exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913, and his works were also exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Paris, and Rome.

Julie Rotblatt-Amrany is an American sculptor and painter, whose work explores the resurgence of the figure in modern art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mildred Howard</span> African-American artist

Mildred Howard is an African-American artist known primarily for her sculptural installation and mixed-media assemblages. Her work has been shown at galleries in Boston, Los Angeles and New York, internationally at venues in Berlin, Cairo, London, Paris, and Venice, and at institutions including the Oakland Museum of California, the de Young Museum, SFMOMA, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. Howard's work is held in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Ulrich Museum of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William McVey (sculptor)</span> American sculptor

William Mozart McVey was an American sculptor, animalier and teacher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Statue of Mahatma Gandhi (San Francisco)</span> Statue of Mahatma Gandhi by Zlatko Paunov in San Francisco, California, U.S.

Mohandas K. Gandhi is a 1988 bronze sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi sculpted by Zlatko Paunov and Steven Lowe. It is located in the plaza to the southeast of the San Francisco Ferry Building along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California, United States. The 8-foot (2.4 m) tall sculpture is mounted on a block which bears a plaque, raised on two steps. It was a gift from the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation.

Adaline Dutton Kent or Adaline Kent Howard, was an American sculptor from California. She created abstract sculptures with forms inspired by the natural landscape.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Cravath</span> American stonework artist and arts educator

Ruth Wakefield Cravath (1902–1986) was an American stonework artist and arts educator, specifically known for her public sculptures, busts and bas-reliefs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Statue of Barbara Jordan (University of Texas at Austin)</span> Sculpture in Austin, Texas, U.S.

Bruce Wolfe's statue of Barbara Jordan on the University of Texas at Austin campus was erected in 2009.

Charles Robert Winston (1915–2003) was an American jeweler, sculptor, and educator. He was known for his organic forms and sculptural jewelry in 1950s and 1960s. Winston was a co-founder of the Metal Arts Guild of San Francisco, a non-profit, arts educational organization. In 1997, he was honored as a Fellow of the American Craft Council.

References

  1. "Bruce Wolfe". Moody Center for The Arts. 2017-05-25. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  2. Sam Whiting (June 8, 2003) "Heads Above the Rest - Bruce Wolfe on the method and madness of sculpture", San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2013-09-25.
  3. Bruce Wolfe Biography Archived 2008-09-05 at the Wayback Machine Shuptrine Fine Art Group
  4. Projects | Rice Centennial Celebration Archived December 17, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Rice University
  5. "Piedmont: Wolfe has creates artistic Who's Who of notables". East Bay Times. 2015-08-05. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  6. Bruce Wolfe – Commemorative Artist, Sculptor & Painter Archived July 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine brucewolfe.com