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Beckie Kravetz began her sculpture career as a theatrical mask maker. She
received her training at the Yale School of Drama, the Centro Maschere e
Structure Gestuali in Italy, the Taller de Madera in Guatemala, and the
Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico. In 1988, she became the resident
mask maker for the Los Angeles Opera, where she also works as a guest
principal makeup artist and assistant wig-master. Her skills have helped
transform the faces of dozens of singers, including Placido Domingo, Sir
Thomas Allen, Carol Vaness, Samuel Ramey, Richard Bernstein, and Rodney
Gilfry. A 1993 exhibition of her masks at Roark Gallery in Los Angeles led
to the creation of Beckie’s first series of non-wearable, sculptural masks.
Years of working with actors inspired her to explore the mask’s inner
surface: the point of transformation between actor and character. Early
works using painting and text on the inside of the face evolved into masks
containing three-dimensional tableaus, as seen inside the faces of the
Sculpted Aria Series.
In 1998, the Los Angeles Opera hosted the premiere solo exhibition of
Kravetz’s Sculpted Arias at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Select pieces in
the series have subsequently been shown at the Metropolitan Opera Gallery,
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson MOCA, and the Seattle Opera Ring gallery. She
continues to add to the Sculpted Arias series, including the array of
characters from Wagner's Ring Cycle, but her work is neither limited to
portrait masks nor to operatic themes. She is currently casting a new series
of figures and faces and is creating a contemporary installation group of
life-sized ceramic figures interacting with masks. Kravetz has received
several grants to fund a public artwork also life-sized, in collaboration
with women in a transitional housing facility and the residents of the
neighboring community.
In 2001, Beckie Kravetz was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to Spain, to
study wood sculpture, ritual masks, and puppets. She has also received
grants from the California Arts Council, the Arizona Commission on the Arts,
and private foundations. Currently represented by the Shidoni Gallery in
Santa Fe, and Mountain Shadow Gallery in Tucson, Beckie's sculptures have
also been exhibited at the Tucson Museum of Art (Arizona), The Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles (solo exhibition), Tucson Museum of
Contemporary Art, the Jewish Community Museum (San Francisco), the Downey
Gallery in Santa Fe (solo exhibition), Lincoln Center Library (NYC), Gallery
10 and Minds Eye Gallery (Scottsdale, AZ), Davis Dominguez, Dinnerware and
TDS galleries (Tucson), Walker Gallery (Davis, CA), Mesquite Grove gallery
(Patagonia, AZ), and Roark Gallery (Los Angeles). Her theatrical mask work
has been seen in numerous opera, regional theater and university productions
including Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, New York ’s Classic Stage
Company, Pan Asian Repertory Theater and Lincoln Center Institute, LA’s
Ziqqurat Theater and Towne Street Theater, Teatro La Tia Norica and Gran
Teatro Falla (Cádiz, Spain), Yale University, Bryn Mawr and Hunter Colleges.
She has also created masks for Madonna’s Max Factor Gold international
campaign, and the opera-themed Nike and Pepsi commercials featuring Charles
Barkley and Michael Jackson. Her work can also be seen in the Disney film,
"The Haunted Mansion." Beckie lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband,
author and journalist Alan Weisman.
The artist welcomes public and private commissions, including
site-specific installations, figures for fountains, architectural elements,
and portraiture.
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