Collection - artwork available for state agency loans

Norma Minkowitz is an artist who uses crochet techniques to create three-dimensional sculpture, often of the human form. She was born in New York City, NY, and currently resides in Westport, CT. She is a graduate of Cooper Union Art School (NY), where she focused on drawing the human body. Her work can be found in several museums and galleries across the country, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT), Gallery La Peche (CA), Society of Contemporary Crafts (PA), and the New Arts Gallery (Litchfield, CT). Minkowitz is also the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Connecticut State Office of the Arts Visual Artist Grant for Works On Paper and a Visual Arts Fellowship for Master of the Medium Award from the James Renwick Alliance of The Smithsonian Institution, and a National Endowment for the Arts: Visual Arts Fellowship.

I seek mystery in the shadows of the work. The netting's effect is to blur the shape within. There is often paint on the surface, which can at times be invisible and at other times obvious depending on the light, another important element of my work. I want the openness to convey a sense of energy as the viewer moves around the sculpture. My work retains implications of containment and psychological complexity, while focusing on the human form and often the land-scape. I am engaged in a process that weaves the personal and universal together. The interlacing suggests a delicate quality symbolic of the human condition, but conversely, the pieces could also imply the strength of steel mesh. In many of my works twigs and branches are left inside, and are visible in an eerie way through the exterior of the sculpture, often suggesting connections to the human skeletal or circulatory systems.