Sculpture by Stephanie Cooper

Two new exhibitions opened Friday, February 2 in the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Weston Art Gallery featuring the evocative and imaginative wood-carved figures and tableaus of Cincinnati artist Stephanie Cooper, and the quietly elegant minimalist forms of Robert Fry. The contrasting figurative and non-objective approaches the artists employ in their sculpture are linked by both artists’ primary use of wood and their shared interest in its versatility, intrinsic beauty, and symbolic and spiritual nature.

Stephanie Cooper’s figurative sculptures allude to everyday personal and emotional dramas as personified in the intricately carved wooden figures and tableaus she has created and delighted viewers with since the early 1980s. Inspired by such diverse sources as childhood dolls, television cartoons, and bedtime fairy tales that conjured witches and fairies, to the later influences of folk art and Haitian voodoo, Cooper’s sculpture captures suspended moments of life’s ongoing drama and affords the viewer a tantalizing glimpse into the artist’s imaginative world of personal myth and dreams. Her work exudes a raw elegance, sophistication and wit that belies its crude outward appearance.

The exhibition features recently completed sculpture along with a selection of work completed during the 1990s on loan from private collections. Single figures, hand-mechanized works, root figures and tableaus are presented.

Since completing her master’s degree in sculpture at the University of Cincinnati in 1980, Cooper has exhibited her work extensively in both commercial and museum settings. She is represented in numerous private, corporate and museum collections and has been the recipient of several city and state artist fellowship grants. Since 1996 she has been an adjunct faculty member at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. This exhibition is sponsored by an anonymous donor.