Carol Ann Wesson, Early Years of the Artist
Carol Tarzier was born Carol Ann Wesson in Lewiston, Maine, in the summer
of 1962. A thunderstorm welcomed into the world a person with an uncommon
destiny. Her early life involved travel to England, South America, Switzerland,
Scandinavia, West Berlin, and finally California. The wandering years
of the Wesson family, as well as the tumultuous history of the Tarziers
of Latvia, are detailed in the family
website. Many forces combined to give perspective to Carol's art:
a family legacy of spiritual
pursuits and political activism; an early background saturated with
science and knowledge; schooling at Laguna
Blanca School of Santa Barbara; undergraduate work at Stanford; and
a degree from Bennington College in Vermont. Additional perspective was
provided by several trips across the US alone in a beat-up VW Bug, and
a profound love of physical pursuits in nature, especially among the granite
spires and rarefied air of the high Sierra Nevada. Carol began drawing
seriously in childhood. Sculpture and drawing are her professional vocation,
to which she has recently added landscape
and figurative painting.
Carol now lives and works in the Bay Area of California, in her spacious
Oakland studio and adjoining metal shop. She oversees all aspects of the
production process for her sculpture and completes much of the detailed
finishing herself. The studio provides workshops in sculpture and painting
for Bay Area artists.
Carol welcomes inquiries and comments. Please contact her at 510-652-9100, or via email.
Artist's Statement
I began sculpting in 1993, a few years after moving to the Bay Area.
Sculpture soon grew to be my primary form of artistic expression, with
water-based clay as a medium, leading to loose representations of the
human form. I recently embarked in a new direction, producing high-polish
classically finished bronzes with a contemporary feel.
I approach art in two ways: one, to express the beauty of form, and secondly,
to use form to convey mood and emotion. I work directly from the model,
usually in plastalina. After working the piece in the looser clay medium,
I finish it in resin, arriving at a final "pattern" when the
work satisfies me both as representation and as form. I find deep satisfaction
in figurative as well as abstract work, and believe that the best sculpture
incorporates elements of both.
I recently completed a major project, the life-size memorial
to George Hasslein, dean of the College of Architecture and Environmental
Design at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Since then, in a break from the world
of bronze, I have produced a number of paintings in oil.