Deborah Kaplan Evans

Deborah Kaplan Evans




I have never been content to create work that merely pleases the eye or enhances the decor; nor do I want my work simply to mean something. I prefer to demand more from both my viewers and myself: I want to arrest the eye and hold it long enough to engage the viewer in an ongoing emotional and intellectual response.
Although my undergraduate and doctoral degrees in English literature from the University of Chicago are hardly traditional training for an artist, I believe this academic background has strongly influenced my creative life. I see the arts as essentially inseparable; my studio is always filled with the sound of classical music, and my breaks are filled with good books. I believe that one of the challenges of life is to integrate rather than separate the various strands that make up any individual.
My sculptures, sometimes whimsical, sometimes disturbing, confront us with the complexity and confusion in our attitudes towards many aspects of life. In my current work I return to my ongoing fascination with the individual human face. working on a relatively small scale, I have been pursuing themes of aging and the passage of time--the accretions of living as well as the loss and diminishment that accompany age. The faces are direct and specific but at the same time, I hope, referential to what is universal in the human experience.

Education:
The University of Chicago, B.A. 1971, M.A. 1972, Ph.D. 1976, in English
Art classes at Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, CA

Selected Awards:
Honorable Mention, “Da Yu Ziao Hu”: Second International Small Teapot
Competition, 2006 (piece purchased by Saddleback College)
Aftosa award, California Clay Competition, The Artery (Davis, CA), 2005
Signature Member of Watercolor West, 1997
Signature Member of National Watercolor Society, 1995
Sybil Moschetti Award: Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Exhibition, 1995
First Place in Watercolor, Beverly Hills Affaire in the Gardens, Spring 1994
$1000 Purchase Award in Brand XX: 20th Annual Juried Art Exhibition, 1990

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