the sculptor

Once upon a time and in a former life, I sculpted more than I wrote. It’s what came easily. It’s what I’d studied since my early teens at the Corcoran in Washington, DC, and at l’Academia di Belle Arti di Perugia, Italia. I received my first portrait commission at age sixteen.

I told my daughter that I’d immortalize her pout if she wanted. She did: I could not get her to smile. I should sculpt her lovely smile now. The adult is so beautiful.

This huge cement piece followed me home on a ship from Italy. It’s all I have left from those days — and it was the largest, heaviest thing I’d made. As you can see, I toyed with abstraction. When that bored me, I went back to creating life-size bodies (cast in resin from clay figures) that hung on the wall. A pair won First Place in a show judged by the sculpture curator of the National Gallery. Years ago.

Most of my work lives elsewhere, commissions that grace homes and offices. I played with various media: clay, stone, metal, pieces cast in bronze or cement. Resins, being toxic, disappeared from my world once I had children.

I began doing more portraits, such as the one commissioned of this young boy and the one on the right of my mama.

I loved working from life, getting to know the clients, until one day I didn’t. I had three commissions in a row that made me wonder if this could possibly be my calling.

Which is when I decided to follow my other love: writing.

And here I am.