About the Artist, Caroly Van Duyn

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Following is a brief history and some thoughts on my current work.

Connecticut is my home state. In my early years I was lucky to be surrounded by a community of influential and inspiring artists, teachers and individuals. Among these, my parents, both graduates of the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague, Holland. At 15, I began to study with Jim Wheeler in an intensive salon-like sculpture and drawing program. Jim became the most influential, challenging and provocative teacher of my career. Jim is a former student of Mike Skop, a sculptor and well loved mentor, who studied with Ivan Mestrovic. During these years I developed the philosophical underpinning in my approach to my work as an artist; the close observation of nature, intense and long hours of sketching and sculpting form, learning to look, and then forming the ability to "see". This became the foundation to my process as an artist, and from this approach I learned to observe the incredible beauty and drama of life and nature as an interrelated whole.

I graduated from the Art School in S.U.N.Y. at Purchase, focusing on my studies in drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. International artist Antonio Frasconi, a master wood block printer and book illustrator was my advisor and professor. Sculpting accompanied my drawing and printmaking, with clay as one of my chosen mediums. This versatile earth material offered both a graphic and a three-dimensional expression to my ideas. My work continues in this medium, utilizing a myriad of possibilities, with new veins to investigate appearing on the horizon constantly.

I arrived in North Carolina in June 2003. At first I worked on a back porch under a wisteria bower. I was frequently challenged to strengthen my commitment as an artist by intermittent storms, mosquitoes and playful running, jumping and falling squirrels. Temperatures reached the top and the bottom of our outdoor thermostat according to the season at hand.
My partner took pity on me and provided an improved space for me to work, in the form of an Amish Barn shed transformed into a studio - not far from the wisteria bower. I later had my first major show at the Lee Hansley Gallery in Raleigh. Despite my rudimentary beginnings here, I presented 34 sculptures in this show in January of 2005. Recently I became the recipient of a Wake County Arts Grant that facilitated in the purchase and installation of a new kiln and kiln shed.

I am enthusiastic and working full time as an artist in my new found home, surrounded by a welcoming and supportive art world here in North Carolina, with fellow artists, musicians, writers and art lovers whom I respect and admire, each of us sharing our unusually colorful lives in pursuit of our dreams.