Hank Kaminsky
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Hank Kaminsky is a sculptor and peace activist living in Northwest Arkansas. Hank is a New York City native and studied at Queens College, the Art Students League of New York, The New School for Social Research, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His mentors included such luminaries as Seymour Lipton, Walker Hancock and José de Creeft.
After early employment as an electrical engineer, Kaminsky became facilities manager at the Cooper Union technical studios in the late sixties. He also helped organize several artists’ cooperatives, including the Brooklyn Free Press (a printing shop) and “Museum, A Project of Living Artists,” an alternative gallery.
A road trip through the desert states in 1969 opened Kaminsky's eyes to the power of natural form, particularly landscape, as sculpture, and in 1971 he chose to leave the East Coast gallery scene and relocate in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. There, over time, Hank and his wife, Jo Ann Burton, operated a crafts gallery, a gold and gemstone business, and a sandcasting studio, and he began working in a sculpting technique he calls “Sand-Matrix Design.” He works in the negative in the open face of the sand mold.
In 1984 Hank and Jo Ann moved to nearby Fayetteville, Arkansas where Hank leads a team of sculptors in a 6,000-square-foot studio and foundry. Jo Ann, an art therapist, counselor, and painter, operates The Art Experience, a multifunctional arts center. Jo Ann is also a skilled puppeteer who has studied in Vermont, USA with Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theater and in Mali with Yaya Coulibaly of Sogolon Puppet Troupe. She heads the First Night Fayetteville procession each year on New Year's Eve, which includes many giant puppets of her creation in collaboration with the community.
Today, Hank Kaminsky is widely recognized for his synthesis of spiritual energy and raw organic form. His work adorns thousands of private collections and public spaces. His most recent work includes the Peace Prayer Fountain, located in downtown Fayetteville.
