Artist: LauraLee Stay Bradshaw
Title: Dawn Awakening
Medium: Bronze
Price: $3,600
Dimensions: 7×15 inches
Artist Statement: This bronze muse flows in lyrical shapes capturing feminine beauty. Her pose is reminiscent of Botticelli's Birth of Venus.
Artist Bio:
Laura Lee Stay Bradshaw specializes in figurative sculpture. She holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Brigham Young University. She lives in Saratoga Springs, Utah
Laura Lee is known for making the human experience iconic. Themes of celebration and joy run through her work. Her sculptures enhance space, i.e., gardens, public plazas, and water features. Making the world a more beautiful place to live is her goal: Notable works include a sculpture of Martha Hughes Cannon, an eight-foot bronze monument at the Utah State Capitol; Celebration of Healing, an eighteen-foot bronze in Monroe, Louisiana; and portrait busts of Presidents Gordon B. Hickley and Howard W. Hunter in the Conference Center at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Sculpting is the process of bringing forth something ordered and beautiful in a 3D context. I have been a figurative artist my entire life. Modeling the human form is personally engaging and very rewarding. I agree with the art historian Roger Scruton who said, "The human form is sacred for us because it bears the stamp of our embodiment." My work originates from my being human; I enjoy making art that represents the human condition and tells a story about humanity.
I work from live models and manipulate clay into sculpted figures. Pinch by pinch, slowly the clay is transformed to render a model's body shape and pose. The model is my reference; I use artistic liberty and alter proportions or exaggerate gestures. Nevertheless, I am greatly influenced by the model's body and personality. During the creative process I work half of the time with a model and the other half is working in solitude. Usually, I chose. to impose some kind of universal theme such as celebration, human dignity, or passage of time. The content is never defined in the beginning; often the direction is discovered during the process.
