Deborah Rael-Buckley was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1953. She finished her BA in the history of art and architecture with honors at the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1996. After a move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she began taking art studio courses and discovered a profound interest in ceramics. She completed her MFA in ceramic sculpture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2000, receiving awards and fellowships along the way.
Her award winning narrative sculptures explore a blend of exciting architecturally informed shapes, culturally significant imagery, and richly textures surfaces. The dramatic open spaces, reveal the building process while creating negative spaces that interact with light and shadow. Rael-Buckley's sculptures are coil built without benefit of armatures or forms, and feature a vocabulary of imagery including branches, bones, ropes, text and culturally significant symbols to express her thoughts on family, culture, memory, and religion.
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