Gina Michaels
Gina Michaels’ bronze sculpture merges the forms and gestures of humans and the botanical world. The work is at once animal, vegetable and mineral, exploring the commonalities among these seemingly disparate realms. Gina uses bronze directly, liberating it from the dutiful role of replicating forms made in other materials. The process begins in a sandbox, in a spirit of meditation and play. She presses her hands and feet into casting sand, imprinting the expressive energy of the body into the mold. She then ladles molten bronze into the hollows created by the body. Using a spontaneous, collage-like vocabulary, she welds the cast elements together, integrating the ancient tradition of cast bronze with the contemporary open forms of fabricated metal sculpture. All work is done in Gina’s Germantown studio/foundry.
Gina Michaels’ work has been shown in numerous solo, group and public art exhibitions in galleries, museums and public spaces. She is a graduate of Oberlin College, studied intensively at the New York Studio School, and received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Gina is the owner and director of Legacy Atelier, a foundry, metal fabrication and sculpture studio serving artists and the conservation/preservation community.