This week, we feature the sculptor Debborah RIchert. 

Above, top - Debborah creates a portrait bust of young Reid Strand at Rourke Gallery. [Photo courtesy Greg Booth]  Above, bottom (left to right) - "James Tiernan O'Rourke," bronze, 1985; "Reid: The North Dakota Kid," bronze, 1988; "Charles Beck," bronze, 1988

Below - "Gabriel," bronze, 1988 

[All works from the Permanent Collections of the RAGM]

Debborah Richert was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1960. She received her BA from Hamline University, St. Paul, in 1982 and her MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, in 1985. Richert is the recipient of numerous honors for her portrait and figure work—including the James W. Johnston Sculpture Competition Award from the International Sculpture Center and the President's Prize from the National Sculpture Society—and many public commissions. Her remarkable life-size bronzes and ceramic works are in collections across the United States. 

Week 3 - Bennett Pearson

Above: Ashanti gold weight, "Crocodiles," bronze, Ghana [From the Permanent Collections of the RAGM]

Bennett Pearson, Gallery Associate at The Rourke, has selected an Ashanti gold weight, "Crocodiles," as his first Staff Pick.

Bennett explains:

These gold weights are interesting because they play with the idea of value. They are used to measure gold, but are bronze, and could very well be a simple brick or pattern (as other gold weights are), but instead represent an animal (or two). It’s hard to know now what the importance of the imagery is as it relates to worth or status or whatever, but there is so much to take in with something that easily fits in the palm of your hand — and even that, the scale, plays with value. It’s an object made for utility, but has so much more to decipher.

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