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, to demands of family. Strengths as well as weaknesses make preserving these bonds and meeting these demands, while maintaining a “sense of self”, a continuous balancing act. 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.

Method: At the start of my career my method was to create spontaneous sketches directly in clay and then use them as reference for my 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 or carry it through the bronze casting process. More often, the clay sculptures are kiln-fired and then also cast in bronze. So there often is an original ceramic sculpture and it's bronze counterpart. For a long time I simp...

My early sculpture training was at the Lyme Academy of Fine Art in Connecticut where I studied portraiture and figure sculpting with Elisabeth Gordan Chandler and Laci DeGerenday. I also studied informally 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, Professor (Emeritus) of Fine Art at the University of Michigan.

I am presently an artist member of The Artists Guild of San Francisco ( www.artistsguildsf.com ) and am showing in public parks and squares around the city. Over the years I've shown my work in numerous public and private venues across the country.

In addition to "gallery" work, I have created 3 permanent large-scale public sculptures in bronze. A 9 foot tall Revolutionary War Minuteman, “The Patriot”, in Bedford, Massachusetts is racing toward the battle at the Concord Bridge; my “U.S. Senator John Chafee” portrait-figure strides towards the Narragansett Bay 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. These permanent public works ensure the value of all my sculpture and ensure its value will increase over time.