Mary Frank moved to the United States with her mother, a painter, in 1940. She studied dance as a teen and drawing as a young adult. She has professed to learning sculpture on her own, without formal instruction. Frank comments on the notion of art’s function in society, “To comfort the dead, to awaken the living,...to make the eyes of children widen, to give courage, and never be afraid of tenderness or the absurd and to gather joy,” Frank draws on her memories, dreams and myths for the content of her work. Unlike many of her more entirely figurative sculptural pieces of the seventies, Sundial is a departure from this vein. Highly geometric, a rough-hewn triangular pedestal is topped by an irregular circle with an inset symmetrical triangle encompassing figures of a human, a horse and another bird-like creature sitting atop the horse. Originally made in clay and then cast in bronze, the main column of the piece was made of uneven and joined slab-work in similar triangular configuration as the inset triangle. The upper portion, employing a similar technique, is contrasted by the eminent triangle as the focal point, where the figures reside. Middling in their detail, the figures bring us center-stage to the heart of the piece. Sundial 1, a ceramic piece, was added to the collection of the Plattsburg State Art Museum in NY. This piece is similar to the one at GFS. However, Sundial 1 has only one figure within the triangular section and images of horses and people, reminiscent of archaic cave wall drawings are stamped into the base. Frank has never limited herself to just one artistic medium. A mere three years after creating these pieces, Frank made a departure from sculpture to concentrate on painting. This exodus, though not complete, has lasted well into the twenty-first century. Over the span of her fifty year career, Frank’s sculpture and paintings have been collected by every major Museum in New York including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Modern Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the Fine Arts Museum Boston and the Fine Arts Museum San Francisco. She has exhibited at prestigious museums and sculpture parks including those above and DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center. She has also received many honors such as the two Guggenheim awards, National Council on the Arts, Joan Mitchell Award, and the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. Frank has also worked on set design for New York theater and illustrated children’s books. Mary Frank currently lives and works in upstate New York. | | 
Sundial, c. 1980
cast bronze
45" x 17" x 12"
Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, NY
Photo: David Steele |
