SchoolArts - April 2007

All Levels

Though artist Audrey Flack may be best known for her huge, personal photorealist paintings filled with feminine objects, since the 1980s she has been sculpting monumental goddesses, many for civic projects.

Formative Years

Born in 1931 and raised in New York City’s Washington Heights, Audrey Flack has been influenced by art throughout her life. As a constant troublemaker in school, she spent a lot of time out in the hall, usually drawing on a large sheet of oak tag.

Sometime in her early years, Flack created a shoebox diorama as a school assignment. Her mother’s blue tinted makeup mirror became a lake. She cut out figures— including Esther Williams, the movie star/swimmer who, with her strong body, was a role model for Flack.

(Recently Flack included

Williams’ body in her statues.) As she worked, Flack lost track of time and was transported into her own world where everything made sense to her.

Flack’s Philosophy Flack believes that with art you can make sense of your world— art restructures the brain, structures your world. Art-making is healing and self-affirmative. The art she describes involves using the hands and the mind—the process where the

Getting to Know

Audrey Flack sculpts the clay head of the Recording Angel for the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, TN. The entire figure was later cast in bronze using the lost-wax process.