Carving Demonstration Offered by Sculpting in Time, Sound and Matter Today

The Sculpting in Time, Sound and Matter registered student organization is pleased to present a carving demonstration and artist talk by visiting sculptors Robyn Horn and Sandra Sell, located at the U of A's Studio and Design Center at 696 W. Praxis Lane in Fayetteville. The chainsaw carving demonstration will take place on the Studio and Design Center lawn from 2-4 p.m. today, Friday, March 31.  

Horn was born in Fort Smith, graduated from Northside High School, then from Hendrix College in Conway. Her mother and her sister are painters, and her interest in the arts was encouraged. After college, she worked in the typesetting field in Little Rock, then became chief photographer for Arkansas Parks and Tourism. After trying her hand at stained glass, she found wood. In 1984, she began working on the lathe making wood bowls and vases, which eventually evolved into carving wood sculpture.

Over the past 30 years, she has developed an aesthetic through studying the work of sculptors such as Barbara Hepworth and David Nash, as well as painters' work such as Marcel DuChamp's Nude Descending A Staircase and Picasso and Braque's Cubism. Horn has always worked in series, making sculptures that contain qualities of asymmetry, geometry, volume, lack of balance and contrast with heavily textured surfaces. In 2005, she ventured into painting and explored similar qualities in two dimensions.

Several museums around the country have Horn's work in their collections. Among them are Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Asheville Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Museum of Arts + Design in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., the White House Craft Collection at the Clinton Library in Little Rock and Yale University Art Gallery. 

A native of New Hampshire, upon completing a career in the military, Sell relocated to Arkansas where she earned a M.A. in art from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Sell has shared her creative process through artist residencies, teaching, being a studio assistant, demonstrations and by speaking to arts organizations and groups. Since 2007, Sell's work has been included in over 35 exhibits in the U.S.  Additionally, Sell's work is included in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Historic Arkansas Museum of Little Rock and the Asheville Art Museum North Carolina, along with several private collections. 

This event/program is free and open to the public and is supported by the Associated Student Government through the Office of Student Activities. For questions or special accommodations due to disability, please contact the Sculpting in Time, Sound and Matter Vice President Holly Kranker at hkranker@uark.edu or call 479-575-5255.