CAROLE FEUERMAN
Biography
Carole A. Feuerman (1945) is an American superrealist sculptor born in Hartford, Connecticut and currently lives and works in New York. She is best known for her figurative sculptures depicting swimmers and dancers. Feuerman is the only woman to sculpt in this style, creating both indoor and outdoor works that are painted lifelike.
In the mid-1970s, Feuerman was creating 3D illustrations for magazine covers and world tour books, featuring rock stars like the Rolling Stones and Alice Cooper. In 1975, she did her first life casting for the cover of the National Lampoon. In the late 1970s, Feuerman began creating fragmented erotic works, adding a new dimension of controversial complexity to her art. She is a narrative artist, instilling her sculptures with conceptual narrative elements. Her works go beyond what fools the eye, inviting viewers to complete the story. In the 1980s, hypothesized by postmodernist thought, she left the fragment behind and began to create full-figure realistic sculptures. In 2011, she founded the Carole A. Feuerman Sculpture Foundation, which fosters under-represented female artists, ensures archival initiatives, and encourages research leading to new scholarship in the field of sculpture.
Her passion for water and the ocean stems from her childhood memories spent at the beach. Feuerman describes the sensation of water droplets on her skin after swimming and the intricate patterns they formed as captivating. The beach became her sanctuary—a place of escape and tranquility. It was during a beach outing with her children that she encountered a swimmer with water droplets streaming down her face, radiating a sense of pride and accomplishment. This encounter catalyzed her first swimmer sculpture titled Catalina (1978).
