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Very familial and intimate bonds were created at 241 W. 20th St in NYC, the studios of sculptor Lorrie Goulet, her daughter mixed media artist Donna Maria de Creeft, and former sculptor student Carol Griffin. Clearly a fruitful environment, as these three women created master works in this space for many years. Lorrie Goulet lived and worked for over 60 years in this 3-story commercial townhouse, which she had shared with her husband, fellow sculptor Jose deCreeft. A prolific artist, she produced a staggering body of exquisite drawings and sculpture in their expansive ground floor studio.
Born in 1925 in Riverdale, New York, Goulet knew she was an artist early on when at age seven she met Aimee Voorhees at the Inwood Pottery Studio and continued working with her for four formative years. In 1944, a student at Black Mountain College in NC, she met instructor Jose deCreeft. They married two years later, had daughter Donna Maria, and taught and mentored hundreds of art students, including Carol Griffin. Goulet also created more than 500 sculptures in her lifetime, mostly using the direct carving approach - which is allowing the medium to reveal the hidden form within. Her work is now in numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of Women in the Arts.
The child of these two prolific artists, Donna Maria deCreeft grew up in this live-work environment on W. 20th St. Her work originates from this early experience in visual thinking and sensual engagement, most notably through a very old dictionary her father repaired that smelled of rabbit-skin glue and was filled with intricate engravings of creatures and objects embedded in the text. DeCreeft has worked in a variety of media since attending the Art Students League and receiving her MFA in 1988 from Empire State College, but remains particularly interested in assemblage and Asemic writing – a beautiful, wordless open semantic form of writing which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. Her works are in many permanent collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital, The Center for Book Arts, Bryn Mawr College and Rutgers University.
Like the other two artists, Carol Griffin was introduced to art and sculpture as a child - an uncle taught her to carve into bars of soap. She eventually honored her passion for the creative arts by attending the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture (where she received a Ramapo Trust Scholarship) and various NYC art schools. But her instruction at The Art Students League changed her life when she was introduced to direct carving in stone by a passionate 80-year-old instructor, Lorrie Goulet. After Goulet retired from teaching, Griffin began assisting her mentor in the W. 20th St. studio and was provided a studio to develop her own body of work - abstract figurative sculpture in wood and stone. This 12-year relationship was documented in the award-winning film Spirit into Stone, which was publicly premiered at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in October 2019. Griffin is currently teaching wood carving at the Woodstock School of Art and her work is also in permanent collections, including the Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples in Florida.
With the passing of Lorrie Goulet in 2021 came an end to the magic created at W. 20th St. It is undeniable that this environment forever shaped these women’s lives and careers. Each artist inspired, challenged, provoked, and supported the others to produce accomplished, significant work. This exhibition focuses on a fraction of this work to expose their bonds and these connections as well as honor their independence and strengths.
FIGUREWORKS at Green
92 Partition St., 2nd floor, Saugerties, NY 12477
845-303-0067
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
92 Partition St, Saugerties, NY 12477-1513, United States
