BIO
Barbara Grygutis creates sculptural environments using architectural elements, familiar objects, and forms from the natural world. A professional artist since the 1970s, her emphasis as a sculptor has been on public art for more than thirty years.
Born in Connecticut, Barbara moved with her family to Kfar Shmaryahu, Israel when she was six years old. Robert Zion, her father, was an engineer who built and opened Israel’s first paper mill. Growing up in Israel, Barbara was exposed to art and architecture from an early age. She studied sculpture in the classical tradition with school trips to Jerusalem and other ancient sites, as well as frequent family travel to the great museums of Europe. Equally significant was her early interaction with the natural world, specifically the desert terrain of Israel with its distinctive patterns and colors. It was the arid setting with its clear desert light that drew her to Tucson, Arizona. A strong connection with desert landscape has remained persistent in her work.
Before entering graduate school, Grygutis traveled around Japan for six months. There she made a pilgrimage to meet with Shoji Hamada, a progenitor of the modern clay movement. Though concentrating on functional forms, Hamada created sculptures that transcended the hierarchical distinctions of “art and craft” or “high and low” emphasizing quality instead. Barbara Grygutis has carried the message Shoji Hamada shared with her, “Revel in the enormity of the world and activities therein; in aesthetics that are apart of, not separate from, everyday life; in appreciating everything from the smallest rock to the highest mountain.”
Throughout her career, Grygutis has explored a broad range of media and techniques. Early in her career, she was recognized for her work with clay. During this time, Grygutis was commissioned to design and produce place settings used for the Senate Wives Luncheon at the White House in 1977. During the 1970s, she received her first commissions for public projects. As more opportunities opened, Grygutis committed herself fully to creating public works, a natural progression from her early large-scale work. Since 1978 she has designed and installed more than seventy-five large-scale public works which are a part of urban transit stations, highway and pedestrian bridges, gateways, public plazas, libraries and municipal buildings, sculpture gardens, memorials, monuments, and other forms celebrating community heritage and local natural environments.
The possibilities of public art continue to hold Barbara Grygutis. She recognizes that public art promotes a different kind of interaction between artist and viewer. The broader and less predictable public art audience invigorates the field. Designing to fit the criteria intrinsic in project guidelines continues to be a fulfilling challenge, “My personal interests and inquiries are explored within the project boundaries. This establishes new challenges for each project. I have to stay fresh. That’s what draws me into my studio every morning.”
