Donald Lipski

Donald Lipski (born May 21, 1947) is an American sculptor. He is best known for his provocative works with objects, his installation work and his large scale public works.

Contents

LIFE

Donald Lipski was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1947. He was raised in the northern suburb of Highland Park, the son and grandson of bicycle dealers. Although his first welded sculptures as a teen won him The Scholastic Art Award in high school, he was a history major and anti-war activist at The University of Wisconsin, Madison, earning a B.A. in American History in 1970. In Madison, Lipski discovered ceramics working with clay-world legend Don Reitz. This led him to an MFA in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1973, where he studied with Richard DeVore and Michael Hall. Lipski taught at The University of Oklahoma, Norman from 1973–77, when he moved to New York.

Lipski enjoyed rapidly growing recognition with his early installation Gathering Dust, thousands of tiny sculptures pinned to the wall, first at Artists’ Space in 1978, and soon after in a Projects show at The Museum of Modern Art.[1] In 1978 his enigmatic, poetic manipulation and transformation of found objects won him the first of three National Endowment For the Arts awards, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship[2] in 1988, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993, and the Rome Prize[3] of The American Academy in Rome in 2000. He is permanently conserved in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,[4] the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Art Institute of Chicago, and dozens of other museums.

Lipski’s pioneering installation works continued in the 1990s with The Bells, at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati,[5] The Starry Night, at Capp Street Project,[6] San Francisco, Pieces of String Too Short to Save,[7] in the Grand Lobby of The Brooklyn Museum, NY), and The Cauldron[8] at the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York.

"Process is critical to Donald Lipski's sculpture," writes Stephen Fleischman, Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue A Brief History of Twine. "His work celebrates the object at the same time it reveals aspects of the human mind in operation... In Lipski's skilled hands, ordinary fly swatters and ballet shoes become poetic centerpieces of sculpture. Similarly, everyday thought processes — like editing, ordering and compulsivity — are elevated to a heroic level." [9]

“As an heir to the Surrealist tradition, the sculptor explores how context transforms the meaning of found objects, and he possesses the knack at composing fantastical stories from unexpected combinations of materials. What sets Mr. Lipski above most others who have pursued this well-trodden path is the quirky, inventive quality to the problems his work poses and the strange, graceful eloquence of his solutions.” -Michael Kimmelman[10]

In recent years, Lipski has focused his efforts on creating large-scale works for public spaces and is today one of the most identifiable, prolific and original public artists in The United States. Among his most celebrated works are The Yearling, outside the Denver Public Library (originally exhibited by The Public Art Fund at Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, New York, 1997), Sirshasana, hanging in the Grand Central Market, Grand Central Terminal in New York City, and F.I.S.H. at The San Antonio River Walk, in Texas. There are twenty others across the United States.

Donald Lipski currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

BOOKS

Further reading

AWARDS

  • -New York Foundation on the Arts Fellowship
  • -Awards in the Visual Arts

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS

  • -Jackson, Reno, Nev, –Regional Bus Terminal
  • -F.I.S.H., The River Walk, San Antonio, TX
  • -The Tent, Indianapolis
  • -Leaves of Grass, Levine Children's Hospital, Charlotte, NC
  • -Intimate Apparel & Pearl Earrings Fort Worth Convention Center
  • -Sylvia, Arthur City of Chicago
  • -Sirshasana, Grand Central Market, Grand Central Terminal, New York City
  • -The LaGuardia Suite, Concert Hall, La Guardia High School for Music

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS IN PROGRESS

References

  1. ^ http://www.moma.org/docs/press_archives/5705/releases/MOMA_1979_0005_5.pdf?2010
  2. ^ //http://es.gf.org/fellows/8882-donald-lipski/
  3. ^ //http://www.aarome.org/people/alumni/society-fellows/member-directory/fellows-affiliated-fellows-residents-1990-2010/
  4. ^ http://landmarks.utexas.edu/artistdetail/Lipski_Donald
  5. ^ http://contemporaryartscenter.org/history/
  6. ^ http://libraries.cca.edu/capp/donald_lipski.html/
  7. ^ http://collectingseminar.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/donald-lipski-%E2%80%93-pieces-of-string-too-small-to-save/
  8. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/09/nyregion/long-island-journal-004243.html?scp=14&sq=donald%20lipski&st=cse
  9. ^ http://www.class.uh.edu/blaffer/exhibit_donald_lipski.html
  10. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/12/arts/art-jennifer-bartlett.html?scp=6&sq=donald%20lipski&st=cse

External links

VIDEOS