Review in WSJ of Martin Puryear (Sierra Leone 1964-66) Exhibition at Morgan Library

The Wall Street Journal on November 24, 2015, had a review of Martin Puryear‘s : Multiple Dimensions show at The Morgan Library & Museum. Reviewer Lance Esplund writes “The 74-year-old American sculptor Martin Puryearis a consummate craftsman. As a skilled young wood-worker, he made furniture, guitars and canoes. And from an early age, he has been interested in the natural sciences and once considered becoming a wildlife illustrator.”

In the Peace Corps (Sierra Leone 1964-66) , he taught  biology, French, English, and art at the secondary school level in a rural Sierra Leone. The village carpenters who made furniture for his classroom impressed him with the level of their craftsmanship. While he studied biology at Catholic University, he took painting classes in his junior year and continued his adolescent interest in nature by making detailed drawings of birds and insects. After the Peace Corps he went to Stockholm and entered the printmaking program of the Swedish Royal Academy of art.

His exhibition is at the Morgan until January 10, 2016, then it goes to Chicago (the exhibition was organized by The Art Institute of Chicago) and finally, in the spring, to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.