click to enlarge
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Amy Bright Unfried
Amy Bright Unfried's bronze sculpture celebrates the variety and beauty of the human form, including women, men and children of all races. Using a classical realist style with modern elements, she seeks to capture not so much the anecdotal quality of a moment as what is timeless and eternal in the moment. Many of her pieces express a particular mood or emotion, often reflective or pensive.
She works primarily from life models, with attention to anatomic accuracy and lifelike grace. The surfaces of her sculptures are not polished smooth by machine tools working on the bronze but retain the marks of hand and tool working on the clay in which the sculpture first takes its shape. Paradoxically, this slight unevenness gives the surface a lifelike quality as light moves flickeringly over it.
She enjoys working on the expressive details of faces, hands, feet and hair. Many of her works contain other details such as flowers, drapery, and, in the case of seated figures, a variety of chairs. Sometimes small creatures (butterflies, birds, turtles and dragonflies) make appearances.
In her studio, she creates figures in clay or in wax, then has them cast in bronze in limited editions at a specialized art foundry. She loves bronze for its classic, enduring beauty, and for its extraordinary tensile strength, which permits the creation of compositions in bronze which would be impossible in media such as stone, wood and terra cotta—compositions involving cantilevering or balancing of larger forms on a smaller base, such as her “Dreamer” and “Robert, a Dancer.” She often combines different colors of patina in a single piece for a polychrome effect; for example, in her “Flora,” “Pomona,” and “Quiet,” the female figures wear dresses of green and their skin and hair are shades of brown and black.
The works range from small and medium-sized tabletop pieces to life size.
Since 1991, Amy Bright Unfried’s sculptures have been exhibited extensively across the country and have won many awards in juried competitions. Her memberships, besides Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, include the Allied Artists of America, the American Artists Professional League, the Pen and Brush Club, and the National Arts Club, where she is an Exhibiting Artist Member. Her work is in many private collections, and she has completed commissions for private clients as well as for public placements.
“Unfried’s figures … meet all the criteria
for classical beauty, being perfectly proportioned and in every way aesthetically
pleasing. At the same time, they have
the specific qualities of particular individuals, as though they could
spring to life at any minute, like the creations of a contemporary Pygmalion.”
- ArtSpeak review of Pen and Brush
Club solo show, February 1997
“Another familiar local sculptor, Amy Unfried’s sculpture was as appealing for its command of space as for its subject matter.”
-Gallery & Studio review,
June/July/August 2002