In the Press

Lux Art Institute, San Diego’s first LEED certified interactive art destination, will welcome Los Angeles-based sculptor Gwynn Murrill as the next resident artist of the 2011/2012 Season.

In over three decades as a sculptor, Gwynn Murrill has created remarkable animal figures that are both timeless and contemporary. Initially working in wood and marble, the artist has since moved on to bronze as her primary medium of choice, but what remains consistent is her talent for portraying the essence of her subject in a form that is simultaneously abstract and figurative. Says Murrill: "It is a challenge to try and take the form that nature makes so well and to derive my own interpretation of it."

From March 15 to April 14, Murrill will be living at Lux while creating, in clay, a troupe of dancing figures based on two years’ worth of studies and photographs of the Los Angeles Ballet. Visitors can “see art happen” while she is in residence and view her exhibit, featuring numerous examples of her impressive animal sculptures, through May 19, 2012.

Paring away everything that is not absolutely necessary to perceive the creatures in all their purity, details such as eyes, individual coloring, and the texture of fur and feathers are sacrificed in order to leave us with their raw "animal-ness" and primal essence. There is no doubt about the animal portrayed. Calling to mind Classical and Egyptian antiquity, Murrill's signature bronze works are fluid in line and form, smooth, elegant, inviting to that forbidden touch and instilled with vitality and a sense of being--either caught in a moment of serenity and self-possession or brimming with the potential to pounce at any moment.

Born in Michigan and raised in Southern California, Murrill received her BFA and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Since her first solo show in 1972, Murrill has participated in 36 solo shows and more than 50 group exhibitions. Currently, through 2011, her Five Tigers are on display at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ in association with the International Sculpture Center. Over her career, she has received many accolades: a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Prix di Roma Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, and a Purchase Award from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2009, Murrill was honored with the Public Art Network’s “Year in Review Award” for her public sculpture and relief commission at The Montana in Pasadena, CA.

Her work is held by many private collections and can be seen in a number of public commissions throughout the U.S. and across the globe, including the American Embassy in Singapore; the City of Obihiro, Japan; Target Corporation Headquarters in Minneapolis; the San Francisco Zoo; the Portland Museum of Art, ME; and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA.