Artistic Resume for FRED MANASSE – July 1, 2010
In all of my sculpture I want to let my passions and emotions dominate the pieces I create rather than slavishly trying to make accurate representations of what I see directly. I have worked in both wet and oil based clays and wax but normally work in oil based clay. Molds are then made and cast in fiber-glass, cement, plaster or bronze. About two years ago I began to work in granite and marble so as to be able to create large sculpture for outdoor works. My eventual goal is to learn to sculpt figuratively and in more abstract ways in many different media including clay, wood and stone so as to create more meaningful sculptures.
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Although educated as an Electrical Engineer and Physicist, throughout my 50 year career in Industry, academia and as an entrepreneur, I was always interested in art, fueled by traveling extensively all over the world and visiting museums and cathedrals. I was especially fascinated by sculpture and stained glass. However, until about 15 years ago, I never thought that I could create art myself. Therefore, I collected antiques, acquired many paintings and other works of art and crafts so as to be surrounded by art in my home and garden. A few years before I retired from the engineering profession in which I had spent more than 50 years, I befriended a stained glass artist and she took me on as an apprentice. I was soon able to design and create works on my own and went on to try different media.
I moved on to trying to sculpt by apprenticing myself to an established abstract sculptor in a Waltham studio and quickly learned how to work with plaster and make small objects (mostly fruits) in more durable materials such as clay, fiberglass, and eventually made castings in aluminum and bronze. After I retired about 9 years ago, I was able to get more formal training in wet clay based fired and glazed ceramics by studying at the Harvard/Radcliffe studio and at Framingham State. I was then able to create hand crafted imaginative pottery works which I did and even began to create some sculptural work, mostly domestic pets for family and friends. I have been a member of the Beaumont Sculpture group for 6 years and have created about a dozen bronze nudes and several more abstract works. I have also started to cast in plaster and cement.
In the last 2 years I have taken several workshops in the Carving Center (CSSC) in West Rutland Vermont and have created a family tryptic in Granite and am now carving my first female nude in Marble, I have also become a Board Member of the CSSC and built a second studio for carving stone.
In my figurative work, I try to work accurately by looking at the model until I have formed the basic sculpture, I then modify it a bit to better reflect my own emotion and mood so as to be able to represent more specifically, what my imagination about the work reveals. I have also begun to expand my work into groups of figures and more abstract modernistic interpretive sculptural work. This was first done in one of my most powerful works, an assembled bronze work relating to my family’s fate during the Holocaust which is called “My diaspora”.
Although, I have only begun to enter formal competitions and exhibitions since 2008, I had previously shown my work to members of my men’s group and at one open studio in Newton, as well as participating in a group exhibition at Millbrook Gallery in Concord NH in the summer of 2007. I have recently exhibited some pieces at the Cape Cod Art Association gallery in Barnstable MA and won an Honorable mention in sculpture for my piece on the holocaust which, as indicated above, relates to my early family history in wartime Europe in their in 2009 Nationals Exhibition, as well as winning third place for the same piece in a 2010 competition sponsored by the Newton Art Association, the Bonnar Exhibition, in Watertown’s ALMA gallery. I have also curated and exhibited some of my sculpture at an Exhibition held at the Hebrew College’s Cutler Atrium in Newton, MA, “Artists Confront the Holocaust last October-December, 2009.
