Artist Talks

During the winter months, we present an online series of Artist Talks. Sign up for our 2024 artist talks, or view past presentations below.

  • Hirokazu Fukawa Artist Talk 2024

    Born in Tokyo, Hirokazu Fukawa received his BA in social science at Waseda University, and studied Graphic Design at Musashino Art University. He received an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Fukawa is a conceptual artist, working with sculpture, installation, video, photography and drawing. Through his artistic practice, Fukawa bridges art and everyday life by using puns and humor, to play visual and intellectual games as aesthetic experiences.

    WATCH: March 21, 2024 Hirokazu Fukawa Artist Talk 
  • Ian Swordy Artist Talk 2024

    Ian L.C. Swordy (b. 1982, Brooklyn, NY) is an artist and writer based in New York. He earned a BFA from Hunter College in 2007 and an MFA from Yale University in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include Day Dreamer (2023) at Paradise Gallery in Sutton, MA, and Direct Carving (2023) and Hammer Time (2021) at Moskowitz Bayse in Los Angeles.

    Swordy's sculptures assume allegorical significance through the innate performativity of the artists’ sourcing of his materials and the physical labor of his process. To make his freestanding works, the Swordy often salvages off cuts and veiny chunks of marble and positions them atop found and hand-carved pieces of wood, concrete, and steel. The resulting works, vaguely anthropomorphized and indebted to industry, nature, and the detritus of city life, evoke a singular strain of punk modernism.

    WATCH: February 22, 2024 Ian Swordy Artist Talk 
  • Percy Kuta Artist Talk 2023

    Percy Kuta started sculpting
    in 2002 with homemade tools. Percy was inspired by nature ever since his childhood when he admired the changing shapes and movement of clouds, shadows of trees, water flowing in the rivers, the formation of stars in the sky forming galaxies, and smoke oozing out of hollow firewood used for cooking food.

    In 2010, Percy moved to Tengenenge, birthplace of the modern stone sculpting movement and artist village in Zimbabwe. Since Percy started in Tengenenge in 2010 he has sold sculptures to collectors from Europe, Asia, America, and even some African countries. Percy has been recognized with national awards and his art is being sold in galleries in the US and Europe. In 2017 he was awarded the first position as “Most Promising Prominent Artist” under the banner Africa Artistic. This was an exhibition held by Amanda Brock, an American collector, at Chitungwiza Art center in Harare, Zimbabwe.

    Percy was 2023 Artist in Residence at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center.

    WATCH: June 21, 2023 Percy Kuta Artist Talk 
  • Ingrid Tremblay Artist Talk 2023

    Ingrid Syage Tremblay is a French-Canadian/Syrian artist from Montreal.

    She completed an MFA in Sculpture & Extended Media at The University of Texas at Austin in 2018 where she received the Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship and the Quebec Research Fund Fellowship among numerous awards. Her work is recognized and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Council for the Arts. 

    WATCH: April 20, 2023 Ingrid Tremblay Artist Talk 
  • Iva Fabrikant Artist Talk 2023

    Shortly after completing her BFA at Boston University, Iva Fabrikant applied for the CSSC resident internship program, and has continued to stay in touch with CSSC since she was an intern. She has shown her work in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Wilmington, and Montpelier, VT. Her work “seeks to be a walk through an alien natural history museum.” She draws inspiration from natural forms, science fiction stories, electronic music, repetition, and wacky and fantastic objects that she sees around her.

    WATCH: March 23, 2023 Iva Fabrikant Artist Talk 
  • Sam Spellman Artist Talk 2023

    Samuel Spellman is an Art Therapy Student and Artist currently working in Philadelphia. He is originally from Milton, Delaware. Samuel received his BFA in Psychology with a Minor in Art from Gordon College in and is in his last year of study in the Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Samuel currently interns at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he provides art therapy services on several inpatient units.

    WATCH: Feb. 23, 2023 Sam Spellman Artist Talk 
  • Chang Sujung Artist Talk 2023

    NYC-based artist Chang Sujung is a video editor and sculptor, originally from Seoul, South Korea. She received her MFA at Hunter College in New York. Sujung actively exhibits her work in both domestic and international galleries. Sujung was the 2022 August Artist in Residence at the Carving Studio, during which she produced new work for an exhibition in NYC, entitled “Detour: Cul-de-sac.”

    WATCH: Jan. 26, 2023 Chang Sujung Artist Talk 
  • Kerry O. Furlani Artist Talk 2022

    Kerry O. Furlani is known for her expressive and incised burgeoning forms. She gives life to her work using chisels and mallets, introduced to her while training at the Frink School of Figurative Sculpture in England, in the late 90s. While her early work focused on slate relief panels, in recent years she has returned to sculpture, producing a growing body of wood and plaster forms that explore the female experience. In 2010, she trained in Wales with master letter carver, John Neilson. Kerry is also known for her public slate lettering work, rangi g from memorial plaques to st nding stones. She has been awarded grants from the Vermont Arts Council and Frog Hollow Craft to support her studio practice and public work.

    WATCH: Apr. 21, 2022 Kerry O. Furlani Artist Talk 
  • Eric David Laxman Artist Talk 2022

    Artist Eric David Laxman sculpts substantial and elegant pieces. His chosen materials are metal and stone. He takes those raw composites and energetically transforms them into something at once very real and highly conceptual. When he’s pulling out of steel or marble its core character, his intensity is almost primal. It’s clear he’s wrestling with the essence of a shape until it acknowledges itself. He’ll use plasma cutters, oxyacetylene torches, arc welders, benders, hammers …chisels if he has to – to liberate the thing within.

    Based in Rockland County, New York, Eric David Laxman has been involved with the CSSC since its early days as participant, instructor, and supporter.

    WATCH: Mar. 24, 2022 Eric David Laxman Artist Talk 
  • Whitney Ramage Artist Talk 2022

    Whitney Ramage is an interdisciplinary visual artist, curator, and arts organizer based in Brooklyn, NY and Rutland, VT. She is invested in varied modes of cultural production and is interested in stripping away the hierarchies and hurdles placed before artists by a monolithic artworld. To this end, she has invested her energies into initiatives such as the 77ART Residency in Rutland and Caddisfly Project— a freeform art publication based inBrooklyn NY.

    Whitney has exhibited her work, as well as curated shows, in New York, Miami, Boston and elsewhere and participated in artist residencies such as the Studios at Mass MoCA, The Carving Studio and Sculpture Center, NARS Foundation and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and others. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic and Sculpture Magazine.

    WATCH: Feb. 24, 2022 Whitney Ramage Artist Talk 
  • Ray Ciemny Artist Talk 2022

    Metal Artist Ray Ciemny is the owner and founder of Artisan Iron. From his workshop/studio in Groton, he has been crafting exquisite custom architectural, landscape and sculptural metal works for more than 20 years. In addition to his inventory of projects gracing fortunate homes and businesses, Ray has also produced commissioned public art. He is represented by Three Stones Gallery in West Concord, MA.

    WATCH: Jan. 28, 2022 Ray Ciemny Artist Talk 
  • Sara Stern Artist Talk 2021

    Sara Stern is an interdisciplinary artist from New York City. Her recent projects prod histories of urban development with animacy and speculative fiction. She received her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited and screened her work in the US and internationally at venues including: Sculpture Center, NY; Anthology Film Archives, NY; the Museum of the Moving Image, NY; The Jewish Museum, NY; Museums Quartier, Vienna; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Her awards include the 2018 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, 2017-18 Fountainhead Fellowship at VCU Sculpture + Extended Media, and the 2018-2019 Visual Artist Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

    WATCH: Aug. 26, 2021 Sara Stern Artist Talk 
  • Anne Brisson Artist Talk 2021

    Anne Brisson is a self-taught artist who is skilled in a wide variety of mediums including watercolor, acrylic, collage, painting, color pencil, pastel, clay, pulp paper and papier maché. Although she has been painting and drawing for over 25 years, she has crafted her sculptural methods in the last 8 years. Her pieces are built on her talent in figurative clay modeling and her love of all things paper. This mixture helps produce pieces that are both whimsical and realistic in their own way. She has shown at various galleries in Canada, and currently resides in Quebec where she is now focusing on exploring with the mixture of pulp paper, with paper-clay and metal.

    WATCH: May 27, 2021 Anne Brisson Artist Talk 
  • Amanda Sisk Artist Talk 2021

    Amanda Sisk studied in the United States and Europe and most recently served as the Governor John Langdon House’s inaugural artist-in residence.  She was also the sculptor-in-residence at Saint Gaudens National Historic Site for two seasons, and is a recipient of the 2015 Gibbons Prize for New England Sculptors (NESA) and the 2013 Dexter Jones Award for bas relief (National Sculpture Society).

    WATCH: Apr. 22, 2021 Amanda Sisk Artist Talk 
  • Oliver Schemm Artist Talk 2021

    Oliver Schemm has taught Art and Art History at Castleton University for over 10 years. He has always been in full support of nurturing and expanding the creative community in Rutland and has done so as the Director of the C.U. Bank Gallery. Oliver has shown his own work locally, regionally and through the United States. While mainly working in sculpture, he has focused on manipulated assemblages using a full range of materials and methods. His large and small scale interactive sculptures have been exhibited in the New England area.

    WATCH: Mar. 25, 2021 Oliver Schemm Artist Talk 
  • Evan Morse & Taylor Apostol Artist Talk 2021

    A graduate of Boston University (MFA) and Wheaton College, MA (BA), Evan Morse has devoted additional time to learning traditional sculpture techniques, including study at Studio Arts College International in Florence and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, Italy. His figures in plaster and marble earned him a 2017 fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a 2018 grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and the 2018 Dexter Jones Award from the National Sculpture Society. Morse lives and works in Newton, Mass.

    Taylor Apostol earned her BA in Studio Art at the University of Vermont and MFA in Sculpture at Boston University. Two years studying in Florence and Carrara, Italy ignited her passion for marble carving and plaster casting. Apostol has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA, and Sias International University in Xinzheng, China. She currently lives and works in the Boston area.

    WATCH: Feb. 25, 2021 Morse-Apostol Artist Talk