Edward Fleming
[Sculptor: Marble – Bronze: Pietrasanta, Italy Galisteo, New Mexico]
“As an artist, I believe that the pursuit of knowledge of the human body is limitless. I’m actually delighted to think that I can study this for the rest of my life, and always have more to learn.” - Edward Fleming.
Edward Fleming’s career as a sculptor has taken a curvilinear form that echoes his work in stone. It began with studying sculpture while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, California from 1974 to 1976. Sculpture continued to be a vital interest, even after starting a 5-year BA program at Tulane University’s School of Architecture in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1976. While studying architecture, apprenticing with architectural firms and beginning a design practice, he continued to make sculpture, although his artistic attention began steadily moving into the realm of buildings.
In 1981 Fleming returned to his hometown of Washington, DC where he continued his apprentice work with architectural firms while studying for architect board exams as well as designing and building houses on his own. Even though at this point there was virtually no time for sculpture as art, he firmly believed that buildings, particularly houses, could be designed and built as sculpture-one-lives-in. Thus, at the inception of his professional practice in 1983, he committed himself to this ideal. And, for the duration of his professional, architectural career, he designed and built mostly residential projects, which are indeed sculptures that people live in.
In 1993 Fleming started a program in stone sculpture at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC. His artistic response to stone was so powerful that within a short time he was juggling his full-time architecture practice with what became almost full-time carving. Discovering an intense desire to return to sculpture as art, he dedicated himself to exploration and learning - as an artist.
The next few years were nomadic and highly educational. In the summer of 1994, Fleming went to Pietrasanta, Italy for the first time, to study at the Pietrasanta Marble Carving Studio with Pasquale Martini and Cesare Riva. After that, he and his family moved from Washington, DC to Corrales, New Mexico for a year. Fleming devoted most of his time there to making stone sculpture and apprenticing part-time with sculptor Doug Hyde in Santa Fe. In the summer of 1995, Fleming and his family returned to Pietrasanta for six months where he studied further at Pietrasanta Marble Carving Studio. After leaving Italy, he and his family spent the next half year living in Costa Rica, before returning to New Mexico in 1996. They moved to Galisteo, NM in the spring of 1997, and for the next five years he exercised his architectural and construction skills and completed his studio where he now lives and works.
Since moving to Galisteo, Fleming has continued his formal art education. He has studied human anatomy at the Santa Fe Art Institute with painter Geoff Lawrence; portrait sculpture with sculptor Stephanie Huerta; drawing with painter Elias Rivera, as well as consistently attending artists’ figure-drawing groups in Santa Fe. He returned to Pietra Santa for a half-year in 2001, sharing studio space and learning from sculptor Rino Gianinni; elder marble artisan Pellacane Blasco, and sculptor Rinaldo Bovecchi. During that time Fleming also studied figure-drawing at the Academy of Fine Art in Carrara.
In the beginning of 2001, Fleming made the decision to create sculpture full-time; thus, drawing to a close his tangential career in architecture, and completing the circular path back to - Sculpture as Art! The focus of Fleming’s work is the Universe manifest in the human form: his Artist’s Statement presents an expanded understanding of his relationship through this vehicle to his work.