Grace Bakst Wapner

Bakst Wapner was born on February 23, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Max and Fannie Bakst. She attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn, and Bennington College in Vermont, majoring in social science with the intention of pursuing a career in psychology, while taking a summer Master of Fine Arts course at Bard College in New York State.^[1][2]

Bakst Wapner initially started by doing clay sculpture, sharing a studio with the sculptor, Eva Hesse. From the late 1960s, she was using Styrofoam as a raw material, sculpting and painting it to resemble rocks. From the late 1970s she concentrated on installations made from satin and velvet, which were in bold colors and pioneered the use of fabric in art. These installations were influenced by the work of American anthropologist Edward T. Hall. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture Award in 1978–1979. She turned to ceramics in the late 1980s, adapting classical vases and urns to her style. She also painted ceramic works of flowers and rocks that were inspired by ancient Chinese and Japanese gardens. Continuing to experiment, in the 2000s she worked with painted textile wall pieces, following the minimalist ideas of her early work and incorporating the fabric-handling methods of her large installations. Bakst Wapner received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Program award in 2013 for her work The Western Wall to be purchased for a museum. She received an Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild (WBG) in 2015. Towards the end of her life, her art combined both fabrics and ceramics and she also did painting. Throughout her career she taught and lectured at colleges, universities and art schools.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}