Arline Tepper

Arline Tepper picked up a pencil and began drawing at the age of two. It took another 46 years before a hammer and chisel found its way into her hands, and it was love at first “tap”! .....

Arline, born in 1943, is a second generation California native. She was born in San Francisco and grew up in the West Los Angeles area, always sharing her art and creativity with others. At 16 she took on her first interior design project with many more to follow. When her four sons were small, she volunteered in their classrooms teaching art, made posters for PTA projects and events, taught art to young cancer patients at U.C.L.A. Hospital, and owned an unfinished furniture store where she sanded and stained furniture and taught customers how to finish their furniture. Chiseling, filing, sanding, and polishing stone sculptured pieces were a natural progression.

After taking stone sculpting classes at Santa Monica College for four years, it was time for Arline to move on. Arline’s many trips to Art City to purchase stone convinced her to look around the city of Ventura and into the opportunities of living in a new community. “The energy of the sculptors in the Ventura area was contagious”, she relates. Shortly after moving to Ventura she said, “I’m finally confident about showing my work”. Apparently others thought so, too. Her piece, A TOUCH OF GOLD, won a first prize award in the sculpture division in the student art show at Ventura College. She continued to sculpt at the college until 2005, often helping and guiding new stone sculpture students. Arline has since moved to Thousand Oaks, and a home large enough for a studio and a place to exhibit her sculptures.

A member of several local art associations, Arline has shown her work in many juried shows from Thousand Oaks to Santa Barbara. Her sculpture, SNEAK A PEEK, has been a very popular and well received piece, winning two 2nd place awards and one 3rd place award. “This piece was my biggest challenge and I almost chucked it”! Two collectors in London now display her work in their homes. One couple, transporting their prized purchase home in their carry-on luggage, had an exciting experience while going through inspection at LAX shortly after 9/11.

Metal bases - using channel steel, aluminum or copper sheeting - and a distinct simplicity in the design of the sculpture, makes her work easily recognizable and less formal. Arline describes herself as a minimalist. “I purposely pick stone with exciting color and an interesting shape. The stone is the star. I just enhance the beauty that is already in the stone. It’s hard to compete with Mother Nature.”