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More About Lee Lawrie...
You may have seen his works, but have never heard of him.
His art is beautiful...but he's never been given the recognition that he deserves.
He matters now, more than ever. He was a German immigrant whose hard work and determination exemplified the American Dream.
His work is found from coast-to-coast, yet there is no apparent common thread to connect the communities in which his works appear.
Part of the Mission of Bisonwerks is to identify all of his works, and grant him the recognition that, in life, he was too shy to claim.
He gave a new meaning to the word "prolific."
He was truly a genius of the visual arts. A person who could transform ethereal visions into the tangible, shapes in stone.
He was a pioneer of Art Deco Sculpture.
He gave a new meaning to the word "prolific." His career spanned more than 70 years: from the Gaslight Era to the Space Age.
Lawrie tells us that ancient and medieval art was largely public art; that art galleries never existed until the 17th or 18th Centuries.
In scores of cities across the United States, you can walk up to his art and view it as close as you can stand. Much of it you can even touch.
Lawrie worked in both the sacred and the secular art worlds, but the majority of his work is accessible to the public.
Most of his commissions were for either churches, or for civic buildings.
No other American Sculptor has created more patriotic or religious work than Lawrie.
Lawrie's primary themes were God and Country. His images reflect religious and civic values.
From the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. to the Peace Monument at Gettysburg, Lawrie's work serves to translate the values of our forefathers into stone images that teach us about the past and prepare us for the future.
Lawrie said that sculpture must be able to convey an idea or a concept in a single glimpse: his three dimensional pictures speak thousands of words. He notes that art on medieval cathedrals served to teach the Bible to societies where only the clerics were literate.
No doubt you've seen this work, but until now, did you know who created it?
It is well established that most people think of the story of Diego Rivera and his smooth move, putting Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin into the Rockefeller's mural.
But few people realize that less than ten yards away, Lawrie was installing the work of Wisdom, and doing what he was supposed to be doing.
Lawrie's work is still there while Diego Rivera's mural was demolished with sledge hammers.
And Lawrie just kept on working...
It's hard not to admire an artist, who does what he's hired to do.
One must wonder, how did he dream up such imaginative designs?
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