Mavis McClure lives and works in Corrales, New Mexico. She is a self taught ceramic sculptor, more recently working with bronze casting. She was a longtime mainstay at LewAllen Gallery in Santa Fe, but now is represented at Turner Carroll Gallery. Her work has recently been exhibited at The American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pasedena, CA and is part of the permanent collection there.

She says of her work, “I am now, and have as long as I can remember been, completely in love with the human figure. There seems no end to the variations of line, beauty, subtlety and soul in our form. From Giacometti to Jenny Saville, our figure seems the most compelling element of our existence. In my work I try to create not merely physical representations, shells, but rather something greater, something deeper, something stronger. A glimpse both inward toward our core and outward toward our potential. I try to build, without ethnicity, without reference to era, figures that evoke a timeless universal commonality.

From a purely sculptural standpoint my figures’ large hands and feet seem both to ground the work and allow for greater nuance of gesture. I particularly want the clay construction process to be obvious, so I usually build the clay pieces in sections. This may also result from some innate recognition that we as human beings are often both physically and emotionally fragmented.”