Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery

Santa Monica College

The Barrett Art Gallery offers a look into the beginning of the career of Los Angeles sculptor Gwynn Murrill

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Gwynn Murrill: Early Wood Sculpture

Dates: September 1 ~ October 24, 2009

Reception for the Artist: September 12, 6 ~ 8 pm

Gallery Walk-through with the Artist: September 26, 2 ~ 3 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Friday 12 ~ 5 pm, Saturday 11 ~ 4 pm

Gallery Contact: (310) 434-3434 / Director, Marian Winsryg

Gwynn Murrill began her exploration of form through sculpture in 1967 as a student at UCLA. Her first endeavor centered on carving a rocking horse from laminated blocks of two-by-fours she cajoled from workers at construction sites around Los Angeles. As she refined her technique, Murrill abandoned construction lumber and began carving life size cougars, coyotes, hawks, and other animals from laminated planks of Hawaiian Koa wood. In the mid 1980s, after receiving several prominent grants, she began casting her earlier forms in bronze. That first rocking horse fueled what became a remarkable sculpture career, punctuated by numerous public commissions, both here in Los Angeles and internationally.

Murrill states, “My interest lies in the fact that I use the subject as a means to create a form that is abstract and figurative at the same time. It is a challenge to try and take the form that nature makes so well and to derive my own interpretation of it.”

Highlighting works from the artist’s own collection, this exhibition will give the public a rare glimpse into the artist’s formative years during the 1970s and 80s, and her fascination with the animal forms, for which she is so well known.

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