CLWAC126Catalog Final single pageDigital - Flipbook - Page 6
Serena Bates
2023 Honored Member
T
his year the Board of Directors has
selected our very own Serena Bates as
Honored Member for 2023. Serena has
served as Sculpture Co-Chair for over ten years
and is a vital part of our organization and an
inspiration in her dedication to CLWAC.
As a child of eight or nine years old,
Serena Bates started her journey of exploration
and interpretation of
the world
around her through art. Beginning with pencil and paper sketches,
Serena went on to explore a variety of media, including charcoal,
pastel, and oil and acrylic paint, as she depicted landscapes, 昀氀owers,
and animals. As a young adult, she studied traditional 昀椀gure painting
and anatomy at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and the
Up Dog, Bronze, 10H x 10W x12D
Rhode Island School of Design.
Upon discovering the joy of working with clay, Serena found her
passion for sculpting portraits – busts and full 昀椀gures, both serious and
whimsical – and all sorts of critters with lots of personality: barnyard animals,
domestic ones, and increasingly over time, marine animals. She added working
with bronze and stone to her repertoire. Many years of observing animals in
nature, at home, and in her job at the Mystic Aquarium, helped Serena develop
her non-traditional approach to sculpting. Rather than taking measurements,
Serena trusts her observations, intuition, and connection to the stories of the
people and animals she portrays, producing a “Wabi-Sabi” e昀昀ect, Japanese for
perfectly imperfect.
Serena is a natural born
storyteller; she creates her pieces
with this in mind. “Stories are what
de昀椀ne my work, what drive my
vision, what inspire my hands…
Precipice View 2020
my life,” she says. The storiesturned-sculptures range from a clay White Rabbit staring
down to the bottom of a log, looking for Alice; to bronze
Three Stooges fountainheads squirting water from pursed
lips; to alabaster octopi and mermaids at play and at rest.
An Otter Time and Otter Place
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