ARTIST Christopher Pardell

Christopher Pardell began sculpting at the tender age of four, carrying the commitment of his dreams to sculpt throughout his childhood and teenage years. After high school, Christopher pursued a formal education in art at a University. Frustrated with the academic world of art and their "narrow viewpoints," he left only two years later.  At 21, Christopher found a job as an apprentice mold maker at a commercial statuary company. It was there that he recieved what he considers to be his "real education in art." The statuary was owned and operated by a family of immigrant Italians, artists trained in the Old World style. Christopher rapidly learned the skills that would enable him to excel as an artist and earn his living as a sculptor.     Never sketching his designs on paper, Christopher is the consummate sculptor, composing all of his work in three dimensions, in a moquette. This unique approach explains the unparalleled beauty of line and sense of action that is the trademark of his work. As an artist, Christopher is drawn to the aesthetic of human figure and his desire to capture a moment of the tragedy and nobility of human endeavor. For Christopher, the history of the Native American peoples, defiantly holding true to their traditions and beliefs in the face of opposition, is a story that exemplifies the human condition throughout the ages. In creating his sculptures for Legends, Christopher strives to shape his feelings for humanity in a way that will make a connection with the viewer-a connection that will pull the viewer into another time and place and allow them to form an understanding of another individual. In his wish to pass on the good fortune that he has come to realize, Christopher formed an artist's cooperative, an apprenticeship program that gives young artists the same kind of Old World training that he was lucky enough to acquire.  "My work is about more than just excitement and motion and fear," this gifted artist tells us, "it's about the bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow that we all know, that we all feel." Christopher goes on to say, "When they poured the slab for my studio, I carved a motto into the concrete as it hardened. It says 'Life is a performance artwork, make yours beautiful.' When you create, beauty is not about how you see things, it's about how others will see it. Art is our manner of contact with each other. It's not about me and it's not about you, it's about us.  

View Art Pieces by Christoper Pardell, click here.