The Bonita Museum and Cultural Center has recently opened its newest exhibition, “The Art of Animal Sculpture.”
The exhibition features more than 40 sculptures that showcase animals as the artistic inspiration. The show will exhibit large and small scale works of sculptors Mark Edward Adams, D. L. Engle, Mehl Lawson, and Adam Matano.
These award-winning artists represent some of the top sculptors of animals in the country, and their sculpture has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries across the country.
Mark Edward Adams views the animal as a metaphor for the human condition. His modern impressionistic style emphasizes emotions that range from extreme joy to heartache. Adams’s work has been exhibited at the Gilcrease Museum, the Booth Museum, Brookgreen Gardens, and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. He has received major awards from the National Sculpture Society and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
D. L. Engle sculpts animals with a reverence for the past. As she explains, “There is a quality that animals possess that has intrigued humans since our beginning. With reverence they were painted and carved on cave walls. Through all ages and cultures they have inhabited our dreams and mythologies. We see distilled in them all the powers and mysteries of Nature and so have longed for a closer understanding and kinship with that mystery.” Engle has exhibited her work at the LA Natural History Museum, the Wildling Museum and the Autry Museum. She was also the recipient of the Marilyn Newmark Memorial Grant from the National Sculpture Society.
Mehl Lawson is known for his depiction of horses and the relationship between the horse and the riders. He takes inspiration from vaquero tradition of Old California and is regarded as one the top Western sculptors in the country. Among his numerous awards includes the Remington Award at the Prix de West Show at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Thomas Moran Award at the Masters of the American West Show at the Autry Museum.
Adam Matano is an academically trained artist who specializes in animal sculpture. Matano has explained, “The design of the animal ambiguously demonstrates emotion through form and gesture, provoking an intriguing interaction between it and the viewer. My visual ideas start in the studio and are further explored with live animals, most recently from the zoo. I discover physical and psychological characteristics of the individual that speak to the initial ideas, whether they are actually inherent in the individual or my projection of who they are. They help to define my final works.” Matano has exhibited his work at the LA Natural History Museum and the Autry Museum.
“The Art of Animal Sculpture” is on view through March 16, 2019, at the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center, San Diego County (CA).
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