Lance Dooley featured at Icicle Arts Gallery next!

Icicle Arts Gallery presents “Hand, Heart, and Head,” featuring figurative sculptures and drawings by East Wenatchee artist and Wenatchee Valley College faculty member Lance Dooley. The show opens on July 19 and will be on display until August 22. A “Meet the Artist” reception will be held on Friday, July 22, from 5PM to 7PM with free admission, refreshments, and local wines. The gallery is located at Barn Beach Reserve - 347 Division Street in downtown Leavenworth. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11AM to 4PM and by appointment.

Lance was born in 1968 to a family of traveling Americans in Thailand. His family then spent 7 years in Tehran before returning to the father's hometown in Oroville, Washington and then moving to East Wenatchee, WA where he graduated from High School with the “Artist of the Year” award. Lance served for four years in the United States Army, mostly in Wurzburg, Germany where he enjoyed touring the countryside and central Europe in his old beat-up 1979 Mazda and learned to speak German. After finishing military service in 1990, he attended and graduated from Wenatchee Valley College where he was awarded the President’s medal. He continued his education at Washington State University and graduated Cum Laude from the Electrical Engineering program. Lance then worked in Seattle for a number of years, while pursuing his artistic studies. When he bought his first house in 1999, he finally had his own art studio and began participating in regional art shows and embracing serious training in the visual arts. The rich infusion of cultures from different countries imprinted Lance and he always dreamed of going to the best art school in the world and developing the necessary skills to visually articulate facets of the society he lived in and other wanderlust adventures and experiences yet to come. That dream came true when he went to The Florence Academy of Art in the renaissance city of Florence, Italy and graduated in 2008 from the sculpting program directed by Robert Bodem. 

Lance is a student of nature and strives to represent that which is in front of him in a naturalistic way by drawing upon his classical training. His subject is the human form and he works extensively from live models. Lance minimizes projecting himself onto his work and attempts to capture the forms and emotions that emanate from each model he works with. Each person carries a lifetime of unique experiences and Lance’s goal is to illuminate this to the viewer. His mediums are charcoal on paper and sculpted clay that is molded and then cast into plaster or bronze. Each project is started with a series of drawings and charcoal studies in order to grasp the character of the model. When a pose and theme is selected, the project transitions into the sculptural phase, which entails creating a metallic armature that mimics the pose and gesture of the model. Clay is applied to the armature in a way to maximize the gesture and rhythms of the forms of the body. Surfacing of the clay varies from smooth to rough and textural, depending upon the feeling to be conveyed. The end result of the project is a representation of the model that often has lifelike qualities of its own, encouraging a high level of connectivity between the sculpture and the viewer. The sculptures fall into several themes such as; historical figures, religious/spiritual figures, fantasy subjects and commissioned pieces. In particular, a lifelong project is the study and investigation of entities known as angels, demons or fairies and how they may be one and the same entity that carries different names or labels in different societies.

Icicle Arts is accepting applications from artists interested in exhibiting their work in 2012. For more details and application information visit iciclearts.org or call (509) 548-2278. Icicle Arts Gallery is a program of Icicle Arts, North Central Washington’s arts alliance since 2004. To learn more, join as a member, and support the arts in North Central Washington, visit iciclearts.org or call (509) 548-2278.