Karen Russo
Karen Russo is a figurative ceramic sculptor who lives and works in the lush green foothills of western Oregon. She chooses clay as her primary medium because of its malleability, capacity for transformation, and direct connection to the earth.
Over the years, Karen has developed and honed a unique method of layering materials, textures, and color that lends her work a rich, organic quality. She hand builds each sculpture from coil, slabs, or a solid mass of clay. The figure is then cut into multiple sections, hollowed, compressed, and then reassembled. The sculpture undergoes a slow bisque fire that can last up to a week. Karen then paints with underglazes, clay paint, acrylic, or a combination thereof to lay imagery onto each figure’s singular surface. Her color palette echos the place that inspires her, the Pacific Northwest.
The resulting sculptures depict women and the tensions of the feminine experience: strength and contemplation, instability and equilibrium, love and grief. Through these maternal archetypes, so evocative of the precious earth from which they were formed, Karen hopes to express an eternal optimism for the human spirit in this beautiful, delicate, and chaotic world.
Karen Russo received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1982. From 1986 to 1987 she studied under Paul Buckner at the University of Oregon MFA Program, with a concentration in Figure Sculpture.
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