LAURA FRAZURE

After many years of studying and teaching anatomy, Laura Frazure has developed a distinctive approach to figurative sculpture, specifically concentrating on the female body. Rejecting direct observation and the use of live models, Frazure employs a more structural approach to form-making and invented proportional relations. This process emphasizes “direct modeling”, highlighting form and form development with no subsequent mediatory processes. Using translucent waxes coated with a thin glaze of oil paint and varnish, air dry clay and a modeling compound, the figures are constructed on a steel reinforced aluminum wire armature.

The inspiration or generative material for Frazure’s work comes from a number of sources, including literature, popular culture, politics, the media and art history; all directed toward the uses, commodification and modes of presentation of women. These source contents combine with the study of anatomy, “bodily rhetoric,” and the expressive qualities of materials to inform the work. Narrative fiction has proven to be especially influential from early on in Frazure’s practice, having a profound effect on her development as a figurative artist.

The title of the exhibition reflects Frazure’s interest in the conventions of “bodily rhetoric”, described as denaturalized figural attitudes or poses, invented to express ideas intrinsic to a particular medium. The Greek Kouros figures serve as notable examples of a derived pose specific to the medium of sculpture. A number of Frazure’s sculptures reference the idiosyncratic, media generated poses of contemporary fashion photography, with the presentation of the body, as in the Kouros figures, lying outside the realm of normal posture and colloquial gesture.

A more recent group of works directly reference the poses, gestures and facial expressions of social justice protestors. Individual figures are extracted from groups of protestors, mostly in Philadelphia, using documentary photography from print and digital media sources. These along with a companion series of poses of physical labor are composed “verbatim” in a more direct, naturalistic manner and together offer visual metaphors for the contemporary human condition in late capitalist America.

BIO

Laura Frazure is a sculptor and an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Sculpture within the Fine Arts Department at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has also been a Professor of Anatomy at the New York Academy of Art and most recently was a visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, where she led an “International Anatomy Intensive” for Professors from the eight, top art schools in China. She received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art and her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Laura’s professional creative activity has included theater and film production and set design, most notably the independent feature film, Dogma, directed by Kevin Smith. Her sculptural works have been exhibited in New York, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. She has twice been a Discipline Award winner for the PEW Fellowship in the Arts and the Robert Engman Award for sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania. Laura’s work has twice been featured in Sculpture Review Magazine and most recently has been included in the book, Women in Art, Volume 1, Author: Reinhard Fuchs, 520 Masterpieces of Visual Art, The Great Female Artists: From The Middle Ages to The Modern Era.