sculpture painting drawing

June has embarked on a brand new project which will have her out of the studio until next spring (2004). She and her husband Geoff set off in their 48ft sailing ketch, Concerto, at the beginning of September 2003 to sail down the East Coast of America, heading through the I.C.W. and onto Florida and the Bahama's... and who knows what next!
She has taken her pencils, water based art materials with her, her camera and her camcorder and plans on producing a body of work inspired by the sea and landscapes they will come across on their great adventure. This will be a new experience for both of them living afloat and sailing into new waters where neither of them have gone before.

PLEASE NOTE - June has made arrangements for certain peices of her work to be available for sale from her studio while she is away. This is in response to clients requests. If you are interested please contact Edith Loring Thomas on telephone no 508 877 9254
If you would like to be notified when the Cluett's webpage chronicling their journey is up and rumming please let her know. There will also be regular email updates in due course!
June can still be contacted at the above email address, her cell phone number is the same (781 367 0602) and if you would like to contact her via mail here is her forwarding address.

June Cluett
PMB 352
88005 Overseas Hwy., # 9
Islamorada, FL 33036

PERSONAL STATEMENT:

" Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak"
(John Berger - Ways of Seeing)

I grew up in the exotic, subtropical, multi-cultural environment of Durban in South Africa where the warm Indian Ocean rolled its waves along mile upon mile of sandy beach. I loved the sea and everything to do with it. We were surrounded by abundant, extravagant and intense beauty and plagued by apartheid, heat and humidity. I drew from the first moment I can remember. Mainly people. I also absorbed the rugged landscape and its red earth into my soul. The great boulders tumbling out to sea inspired the nascent sculptor in me. The fabulous mountain ranges under wide blue skies all made the deepest impressions on my young mind. I formed the idea that man is molded by his landscape and is an inseparable part of it. One of my earliest memories is of an exhibition of Henry Moore's rock-like sculptures my father took me to. We wandered through taking our time and discussing them. I found them most strange and was very critical I remember they were white so they must have been his plaster casts. It was an important and lasting moment for me.
"She was learning that in her life everything - health, happiness, even love - was subject to the landscape; the weathers of the world were inseparable from the weathers of her soul" (The Shell Collector Stories, Mkondo p199 - Anthony Doerr)

After my marriage we moved country to England, Singapore, Sweden, Hong Kong and latterly a number of times between Boston and London. These moves have had a profound impact on both myself and my art.
My travels in China introduced me to the silken colors of the Far East and strange and lovely landscapes.
In Singapore I became a scuba diver as a result of a long standing fascination with the life and work of Jacques Cousteau. Diving brought me into contact with the intensely varied plant and animal life and extraordinary color under the sea. This has proved a source of endless inspiration and concern for the environment that is the sea. The destructive fishing practices of certain nations and fleets is a tragedy of epic proportions. We most truly need to be aware, for our own survival, as much as that of the sea and all that it contains in the way of life, of the callous disregard with which it is treated.

I work from the solid (as in sculpture) and controlled, to the translucent (as in watercolor and glass). From the reality of a portrait to the abstraction of distilled memory. Each feeds and inspires the other. Drawing is my first discipline. Sculpture is my oeuvre. I have been 'at it' for over thirty years. A sculpture can sometimes take up to a year to complete. I came to painting as a way of resolving the surfaces of my sculptures and it has taken on the mantle of a great exploration for me.

Portraiture is a discipline I have been practicing it for almost as long as I can remember. I have always been fascinated by people and their faces. Their beauty, Their character. A particular line of the neck or the way they wear a hat. This applies as much to children and animals as it does to adults, for I work with them all.

As a sculptor I have worked in clay, plaster, cement, metal, stone and ceramics. With ceramics I learned to welcome the chance surfaces brought about by the fusion of earth fire and water, not to be too controlling. It was a valuable lesson and gave me freedom to see with fresh eyes, again and again! And so with painting and drawing - joy, energy and spontaneity have their place.

Some of the great masters who have become influences in my sculpture include Brancusi, Jean Arp, Gaston Laschaise and Barbara Hepworth.

Wassily Kandinsky's souring musicality in his paintings tugs at something deep inside me.

A great influence around which I am developing a body of work is my Mother's Garden in South Africa. There is a freedom to be felt among the many indigenous plants she grows that leads me to recreate and bring together so many threads of my life.

The artist reveals, to those of us who look, what we very often do not see in the hurry and rush of our event driven lives.

A brief biography

June Cluett is a Fine Artist whose sculpture, portraits, paintings and drawings have been developed over the last thirty plus years. She has exhibited, sold and been commissioned in the United States, England, Sweden, Singapore and South Africa. Ms. Cluett was born in Capetown and educated in Durban, South Africa where she graduated in fine arts, majoring in sculpture at what is now known as the Natal Technikon.

June has lived abroad and traveled extensively. She currently lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Further education includes post-graduate level Critical Studies in Art and Design in London, as well as ceramic sculpture, metal casting and related studies at the Boston Museum School, Massachusetts College of Art and the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Cluett is an active member of the Saxonville Art Studios, Framingham, where she has been working on a growing number of commissions for sculptures to be placed in both interior and exterior settings. Cluett's three dimensional work can best be described as interpretive and is based on both human and animal forms.

June's art takes form over sometimes considerable periods of time as it evolves into a series around a theme. One of the themes she continues to develop are sculptures based on the strength and fortitude of women who, like the soil, are fertile and like a rock continue to continue…..