Janet Amiri

To get lost in the process with no concern about how the artwork will be viewed by another.....the mode of a true artist!

 

Janet Amiri, Los Angeles area award-winning sculptor and popular instructor, is best known for her life- size portraits. Sculpted first in clay, then cast in bronze, her work  is  exhibited in the L.A. area , New York and in Scottsdale, AZ.
“I sculpt to express my connection to the collective human condition; physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. I sculpt to freeze in time pieces of the world I live in; my portraits are always of people I love or people who love my work intensely.  I choose this medium because of its connection to the Renaissance period and the passionate artists of that time.  Articulating spiritual connections to historical events, ancestry and culture captivate my intuition.  When calligraphic illuminations weave threads of truth and revelation into the bronze imagery, I am satisfied the work is successful.”

Janet Amiri's background in studio arts and art history originated at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. where two influential figures; the "Italian professors" mentored her in bronze casting, figure modeling, resin & fiberglass construction. Stone carver from Carrara, Italy, Anthoni Caponi, instructed Janet at the private college's stone quarry and bronze foundry in figurative and abstract art. New York conceptual artist, Don Celender, guided Janet's art history studies to include internships at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, DC and graduate studies in Florence, Italy. Exploration in the realms of Renaissance Architecture/Sculpture and Italian language, in particular the passionate works by Donatello, Bernini, Botticelli and Leonardo, had a lasting impact on Janet's creative journey. Upon receiving her art degree Janet went on to exhibition design and then curating at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Currently.

 Janet is represented by galleries in Los Angeles and New York City. She serves on the Arts Council of the Conejo Valley, teaches sculpture at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts and co-curates exhibits there in The Galleria. She has been an influence on the Art community and an advocate for the arts for the past twenty years. 

 
 
Review of Janet Amiri’s work by Charles Questenberg, Writer and Art Critic 2008 “Janet Amiri has assembled a body of sculpture that plays the mind-bending trick of channeling a dizzying lightness and enchantment and rightness-with-living through what are fundamentally cold and heavy atoms of bronze. It is there in the micrometer focus of her series of human lips, in her shared epiphany that frames of view can be progressively tightened into revelatory synecdotes, that the part (the mouth alone in the spotlight) is often greater than the whole. That human anatomies, when decontextualized from the frame of the lumbering totter of the human corpus, can often channel truth and god and spirit far more tersely and powerfully than can a torso, or even a face. By turning the viewers gaze through the stunning detail and surprising intimation of soul and self contained like a ready fetus in the swell of the human lips, Janet ratchets us in towards ourselves, causing us to shed successive illusions of what makes us human until we arrive out the other side, staring right into the deep but warm abyss of the real human cosmos, the one transcribed like DNA into the center of every human part and every human cell. Some art arrests us, some shocks us and some makes us twitter into the upturned palms of our hands-that is art that is an anvil bolted to concrete floors, against which cultural illusion and corruption is hammered and twisted and made to give up its ghost. But the art of Janet Amiri is forged differently – shaped calmly but persistently into warm ingots of human symbol, gently warped into smooth curves of attraction and meaning hidden in the quotidian aspects of our second-by-second living. In the work of Janet Amiri, it is a response that forms as a beach-milled stone, sun-warmed and smooth, in the palm of the viewer’s mind. What was once a hissing and steaming first-forged bronze has cooled in the steep of her transmuting will, to rest finally on the surface of the senses as a soothing and balanced heft of contentment.” Sculptor gets her hands dirty for Wall Poppin’ Art By Nicole D’Amore Artistic Touch Ventura County Star Aug 2005 Janet Amiri of Thousand Oaks describes the first time she worked with clay as an earth moving experience. “I knew it was something amazing to be able to create out of a chunk of wet dirt something that resembled the human form,” Amiri said.” It was an emotional experience. I just knew I needed to work in clay.” Today the artist’s portraits, figures and wall sculptures can be viewed in galleries and collections in Los angeles area and Arizona. She infuses the spirit of the subject in her portraits as well as the light hearted “Dancing Queens”, finished in multicolored patina. She coordinated the Wall Poppin’ Art exhibit currently at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts “The Galleria” through September. The exhibit features her own work and that of eleven other local artists. Amiri grew up in Minneapolis and demonstrated artistic talent in early age. “ I was always drawing and doodling,” she said,” I couldn’t sit in one spot for more than five minutes without drawing something.” She took Saturday classes at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the Walker Art Center. After two years at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Amiri transfered to Macalester College in St Paul, Mn where the art department chair was Anthony Caponi. He was from Pietrasanta, Italy, a center for marble-carving fro more than 700 years, and he set up a stone quarry and bronze foundry on campus. “That made me focus on one medium” Amiri said. She also studied art history with Don Celender, New York conceptual artist. “ I was fortunate to discover Macalester,” she said. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, she went on to a Masters program in Renaissance Art and Architecture at Il Academia in Florence, Italy, where she came face to face with marble statues of Donatello and paintings of Boticelli following that classical approach to sculpting a portrait, she uses callipers to measure distance between features. “Everything is calculated,” she said, “but every face has it’s own distinct proportions. You have to be flexible.” Yoga and meditation help her focus. “I call myself a Christian Buddhist,” she said. “I am a practicing Christian, but I like the teachings of buddhism and how it relates to yoga and meditation. It helps me get into the creative space much faster,” she said. Amiri thinks it is important for artists to establish a balance. She serves on the boards of the Thousand Oaks Art Association and the Arts Council of the Conejo Valley and is one of the founders of The Gallery at The Landing. “ It is also important for artists to teach .” she said. “Teaching forces you to express what you know. You have to go beyond what you have academically learned.” Amiri teaches sculpture classes the Hillcrest Center for the Arts. “She also continues her training and is currently attending a workshop in Loveland, Colo. taught by Philippe Faraut, renowned stone and portrait sculptor.” She has been studying Rumi (a 13th century persian mystic poet) and did a series of 25 bronze plaques, titled “Hot Lips”, in which she incorporates calligraphic glimpses of Rumi’s poetry. The plaques were cast in the lost wax process, in which a series of molds are made of the original artwork, culminating in bronze sculptures. Several of the plaques can be seen at the Wall Poppin’ Art exhibit at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts “Galleria”, 403 W. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks. For more information about the exhibit call 805.381.2747.
 
Janet Amiri - Sculptor
 

 

*Copied  from Janet's website: http://web.mac.com/janart4