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About

Karen Russo is a figurative ceramic sculptor, living and working in the hills of western Oregon. She uses clay, a medium that comes from the earth, and her art equally to express a deep connection with nature. Her subjects are women from different eras and origins, all exploring feelings of strength, sensuality, and contemplation.

Dennis Galloway

 

About
 

 

Karen Russo is a figurative ceramic sculptor who lives and works in the lush green foothills of western Oregon. She chooses clay as her primary medium because of its malleability, capacity for transformation, and direct connection to the earth.


Over the years, Karen has developed and honed a unique method of layering materials, textures, and color that lends her work a rich, organic quality. Beginning with a solid block of clay, she hand builds each sculpture. It is then cut into many sections, hollowed, compressed, and reassembled. At this stage, Karen carves her signature patterns and textures into the clay before it goes into a slow bisque fire that can last up to a week. She paints with underglazes, casein, acrylic, or a combination thereof to lay imagery onto the multifaceted surface of each sculpted figure. Her color palettes echo the places that inspire her, from the ocean to the forest, and the desert to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

The resulting sculptures depict women that seem to originate from diverse geographical origins, but all of which explore the tensions of the feminine experience: strength and contemplation, youth and aging, love and grief, instability and equilibrium, hope and despair. Through these maternal archetypes, so evocative of the precious earth from which they were formed, Karen hopes to express an eternal optimism for the human spirit in this beautiful and turbulent world.

“I tell visual stories through carving and painting. My art is the observation of and interaction with an ever changing landscape, a collaboration with the feminine and nature. In my recent collection Salt of the Earth, each sculpture evolves intuitively, unfolding from mounds of clay. In a subtractive, additive, and highly physical dance, I carve, manipulate and define the clay form until it settles into shape. The figure emerges from, or is one with her landscape. 



An important aspect of my creative process is time spent outdoors. I look for texture, pattern and color found in nature: rock formations, fossils and shells, seed pods, plant forms and flowers… all around me is infinite inspiration, possibilities and wonder. Back in the studio, I carve the sculpted clay surface with designs inspired by the images I have gathered.”

Karen Russo received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1982. In 1986 she entered the University of Oregon’s MFA Program mentored by Paul Buckner, with a concentration in Figure Sculpture. She has since furthered her studies with renowned sculptors Beth Cavener, Adrian Arleo, Alessandro Gallo, and Tip Toland. Karen has exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her work is part of the Art About Agriculture permanent collection at Oregon State University. She has also co-created several public art installations in Oregon.

 
 
 

Last updated: May, 2023


 

Website Design: Sean Danaher

Sculpture Photography: Sean Danaher & Karen Russo

Studio Portrait: Dennis Galloway