Barbara Brown: Sculptor

Barbara Brown moved to Sedona in 1993 as an illustrator and watercolorist from Dana Point, CA. She took her first sculpting class shortly after her arrival at the Sedona Art Center with Eugenia Everett, where she promptly fell in love with clay. After two years of sculpting lessons, she was awarded People’s Choice for three-dimensional design at the Art Center’s Student Exhibition.

Barbara completed her first bronze sculpture in 1996, during her four-year apprenticeship with international sculptor John M. Soderberg. Her first bronze sculpture, a giant frog sitting on three large lily pads amid cattails and dragonfly, with an underwater life of trout, pollywogs, turtle, and crawfish was purchased by Hillside Market Place and is permanently displayed in the pond outside of the Javelina Cantina. She participated in the Sedona Sculpture Walk, an Outdoor Invitational Sculpture Show from 1996 until its close in 2005.

Barbara enjoys sharing what she has learned with others, and has taught sculpture at the Sedona Arts Center, where she first took her own classes, and in collaboration with such sculptors as John Soderberg, Joyce Killebrew, and Dani Harmon Zack. She participated in the Artist’s in the Classroom Program at Sedona’s middle school, and she taught children’s sculpture classes at the Sedona Boys & Girls Club and the Sedona Festival of the Arts in KidZone, for three years. She gave lessons in her living room for many years until she opened her own Teaching Sculpture Studio, Sculpture in Sedona, in June 2004, where she taught both adults and children. She also facilitated classes taught by other prominent sculptors in her teaching studio.

Barbara opened two teaching studios, in hopes of giving back what was given to her. Unable to maintain either studio outside her home, she turned her home into her studio, exposing concrete floors, setting up work tables and chairs, a clay roller, mirrored walls, and steel shelving where once was a living and dining room. She gives classes in her home studio, both with groups and private lessons, and of course, creates her own work, both in water-base ceramic clay and oil-base clay for bronze.