Isabel Bloom

Isabel Bloom (February 20, 1908 – May 1, 2001) was an artist who was born Isabel Scherer in Galveston, Texas, and raised in Davenport, Iowa.[1] She learned sculpture while studying at the Stone City Art Colony in central Iowa under Florence Sprague.[2] In the two summers she spent there, she met fellow artist and future husband John Bloom, and the two married in 1938.

Isabel's early life

Isabel started showing artistic promise from a very young age and studied at many different institutes such as, the Immaculate Conception Academy, the Vogue School of Fashion and Design, and eventually the Chicago Art Institute. In the 1930s Isabel studied under Grant Wood at the Stone City, Iowa Art Colony. Grant Wood[3] is most commonly known for his work of art, "American Gothic". Isabel's future husband, John Bloom, was at that same camp, also working with Grant Wood.[4] Together John and Grant worked on painting murals for the Des Moines Library and the Iowa State University library.

Sculpture process

Making the sculptures always came easy to Isabel. A close friend, Shirley Davis has said, "Isabel worked very quickly. John once told me that he and she would sometimes decide to create the same figure, and while he was still deciding what kind of wood to use, Isabel would be finishing her figure."[5] Isabel would begin by making a sculpture out of clay so she could later cast the mold. Isabel would then put her own touch on it by adding color, enhance details by adding white concrete and sponging it off, and then apply a resin coating to finish it off. All of Isabel's inspiration has been taken from real life situations, children and animals. All of the sculptures are simple, with not much detail which created an even more distinctive style to the concrete statues.

Notes

  1. ↑ Larson, Sarah (January 26, 1998). "First Bloom sculpture thrown away". Progress 98. Moline Dispatch Publishing Company, L.L.C. Retrieved 11 February 2010.
  2. ↑ "The Stone City Art Colony and School 1932-1933 Isabel Scherer Bloom". Busse Library, Mount Mercy College. Retrieved 11 February 2010.
  3. ↑ "Going Back to Iowa: The World of Grant Wood". Xroads.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
  4. ↑ Bower, Amy (2002). Isabel Bloom: The Artist and Her Legacy. Davenport, Iowa: Isabel Bloom LLC. p. 9.
  5. ↑ ibloom.com
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