MICHELLE O'MICHAEL

ARTIST STATEMENT

Raised in the Permian Basin with ever-present winds and spotted with cacti, steel-rig trees and pump-jacks, my sculpture continues that vision of big blue skies punctuated with iron, steel and wind songs. My art began as a child taking painting lessons with my father. His father was a blacksmith in the Pennsylvania coalmines. These divergent backgrounds unite in my sculpture. My vertical sculptures speak of contemporary skyscapes and of open horizontal spaces where objects can breathe in the environment.

My work concerns moving energy as well as a continuing exercise in scale and proportion. I explore the interaction of mass, structure, space, surface, shadow and volume through quality of line in 360 degrees. Spirals and arches symbolize life cycles and change as appearing naturally in DNA, wind patterns and cosmic movement. My work is calligraphy in the round, my exploration of unraveling mystery of beauty. 

My sculptures range from pedestal, life-size, large-scale to monumental. My designs and drawings are process inspired from environmental forms and collected materials. Each side is different, with careful intersections. They are designed to evoke response from the viewer by studied and intuitive material manipulation. My objective is art that speaks to the primal human response to beauty enhancing experience and feelings in the process.

My undergraduate degree is from the University of Texas at Austin. Art classes included traditional figure drawing, design and casting. These skills developed from years of disciplined work in various media and my MFA studies. In 2013 I was one of the first Masters in Fine Art graduates from Houston Baptist University’s MFA program under Michael Roque Collins, Hans Molzberger and Jim Edwards. The program is expanded to more than twenty-three candidates each semester. Since initiation, the graduates are winning awards and obtaining commissions across Texas, the United States and showing internationally.

My sculptures have exhibited in galleries across the United States from New York City to California, as well as in Mexico, The Arab Emirates, Germany and the UK. My work is in a diversity of private, international and corporate collections, including public art sculptures for El Centro College, The Friends of Katy Trail and Baylor Medical Foundation, both the Texas Sculpture Garden and Fire Station 6 in Frisco, Texas; Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bailey’s Prime restaurants in Dallas, Texas, Embassy Suites in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Rogers, Arkansas and Norman, Oklahoma, Hall Winery and Andrew Lanes Winery Napa Valley, California, the Hilmsen Art Institute in Germany. There are six large-scale works in the Dallas Metroplex along with my twenty-one-foot Future Rising in Jewett’s, Texas, (the official Sculpture Capital of Texas), collection. 

My work is currently represented by: Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas, Texas, Nicole Longnecker Gallery, Houston, Texas, Cinnabar Gallery in San Antonio, Texas, Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona as well as The Sculpture Ranch (formally Benini Sculpture Ranch) near Johnson City, Texas.