Sculptor

Elizabeth Catlett, 96, a sculptor and printmaker renowned for her dignified portrayals of African American and Mexican women who was barred from her home country for political activism, died Monday in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she had lived since 1976. Born in Washington, D.C., Ms. Catlett moved to Mexico in 1946, became friends with great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and others in his circle, and married Mexican artist Francisco Mora. She became known for her commitment to winning greater rights for black people, women and workers in the United States and her adopted country.

Abstract sculptor Christopher Wilmarth, 44, whose works are exhibited in major museums around the country, has died after apparently hanging himself in his studio-apartment, police said. His body was discovered by his wife Thursday at their Brooklyn residence, said a police spokesman, Detective Joseph McConville. She said he had been under treatment for depression. He left no note, authorities said. Mr. Wilmarth's work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Cooper Union Library and other museums and galleries in New York.

Je Duck Park, a young ceramic sculptor from Seoul, South Korea, is featured at the University of the Arts, his alma mater, in a solo exhibit organized by his former ceramics instructor, Bill Daley. A recent recipient of a master of fine arts degree from Michigan's Cranbrook Academy of Art, Park displays work he did this summer after returning here to the university's ceramic studio. Featured are his investigations of the structural and pictorial aspects of three-dimensional form and the viewer's relationship to those aspects.

Bruce Kelvin said he never liked attending art class when he was a student at Springfield High School. And he never thought he had any talent as an artist. Today, Kelvin, 37, devotes all of his time to his craft as a metal sculptor. Kelvin spends his days in a wheelchair in his Erdenheim studio, sculpting copper, brass and other metals to weld into wall hangings for homes and offices. Eight years ago, during a trip to a Virginia art show, Kelvin was the victim of a hit-and-run car accident.

Francis Wharton Stork, 89, of Wynnewood, a sculptor whose work is in galleries and private collections, died Sunday at Cottage Hospital in Woodsville, N.H. He was visiting his niece, Deborah Fisher Regan, in Bath, N.H., when he was taken ill. For more than 60 years, Mr. Stork sculpted in many media, including marble, onyx, bronze, walnut, oak and plaster. His work is exhibited at the Woodmere Art Museum, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and the Tyler Art Museum. Mr. Stork was born in Philadelphia, a great-great-nephew of Joseph Wharton, for whom the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania was named.

Aurielio Regis Milione, 77, a sculptor and master stone carver who left the indelible marks of his vanishing craft on buildings and statuary across Philadelphia and around the country, died Tuesday at his home, in Largo, Fla. He lived for many years in Springfield, Delaware County. Mr. Milione, who was known as Regis, learned much of his art from his father, Louis, and was respected both as a sculptor and as a stone carver. He was a major figure in restoration work around the country.

Cynthia Porter is a Philadelphia sculptor who never comes on heavy. The absorbingly calm three-dimensional tableaux in her show at Swarthmore College share an overall lightness. Vertically hanging assemblages of loosely linked small pieces of wood and metal occupy seemingly changeless spaces as they are wafted ever so slightly with changing air currents. In warm, often intimate work, the artist has tried to preserve the personal quality of her inspiration - fossilized human, animal, tree and coral forms - while at the same time expanding into something like myth.

Ronald Emerson Hower, 81, a retired sculptor and pioneer in artwork for television stations, died Saturday at the Medford Convalescent Home in Medford, Burlington County. He was a former resident of Secane, Delaware County; Holland, Bucks County; and Conshohocken, Montgomery County. Born in Conshohocken, Mr. Hower was raised in Philadelphia and graduated in 1934 from the former Northeast High School for Boys. In 1938, he graduated from the Industrial School of Art and during two summers attended an art school on Cape Cod, Mass.

Philadelphia sculptor Phoebe Adams has been named sculptor-in-residence for 1986-87 at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Mass., the 125-acre estate that was the summer home of sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850-1931). The program is administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in cooperation with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which runs Chesterwood. An undisclosed monthly stipend will allow Adams to spend three months living and working in the studio at Chesterwood, where French, creator of the Abraham Lincoln figure in the Lincoln Memorial, made many of his monumental works.

Morris Staffin, 92, of Northeast Philadelphia, who owned Quality Cabinet Crafters Co. and became a sculptor at 78, died Monday at Jeanes Hospital. Mr. Staffin's custom-built cabinet company was on Kaighn Avenue in Camden for more than 30 years. He also made custom tables, china closets and ornamental woodwork. He retired in 1977. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, he came to the United States when he was 4. He learned to work with wood in shop at South Philadelphia High School. After retiring, he began painting at 75 and sculpturing at 78. In 1986, he entered Pennsylvania's Senior Arts Festival.

Elizabeth Catlett, 96, a sculptor and printmaker renowned for her dignified portrayals of African American and Mexican women who was barred from her home country for political activism, died Monday in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she had lived since 1976. Born in Washington, D.C., Ms. Catlett moved to Mexico in 1946, became friends with great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and others in his circle, and married Mexican artist Francisco Mora. She became known for her commitment to winning greater rights for black people, women and workers in the United States and her adopted country.

JOE HAND IS going to build a statue of Joe Frazier. No ifs, ands or buttresses about it. Going to hire a sculptor, approve a design, carve it, bronze it, erect it on a lovely spot near Xfinity Live. Unveil it on Jan. 12, 2013. (Maybe Michael Buffer growling, "Let's get ready for humble. ") "We are going to celebrate Joe's birthday right there," Hand said emphatically, ignoring the can't-be-done whispers. He's going to raise $200,000, choose a sculptor, agree on a pose, get it built, bronzed and fastened to a handsome marble slab, all in 310 days?

Dr. Royal T. Popper, 88, formerly of Center City, an orthodontist, sculptor, and arts patron, died of complications from hip surgery Sunday, Feb. 26, at Ann's Choice, a retirement community in Warminster. For 35 years, Dr. Popper maintained an orthodontics office in Olney. He had a busy practice straightening the teeth of students at nearby Central and Girls High Schools, said a son, Howard. For several years, Dr. Popper also had an office in Delaware County and taught anatomy at the Temple University School of Dentistry.

Jim Victor's first chocolate sculpting job nearly ended in a meltdown. The Conshohocken sculptor made busts of stars Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller for a 1982 celebration of the 1,000th performance of the Broadway musical Sugar Babies . The famously big-haired Miller swept into the party and then slammed into the sculpture table. Chocolate heads rolled. Candied Ann's neck was broken; Mickey's nose, crushed. At that moment, Victor's fears about trading on his Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts training to make figures out of food seemed to crystallize.

Sergio Scaglietti, 91, who used intuitive genius and a hammer - seldom blueprints or sketches - to sculpt elegant Ferraris that won Grand Prix races in the 1950s and '60s and that now sell for millions of dollars, died Nov. 20 at his home in Modena, Italy. Ferraris, with their hair-raising acceleration and sleek lines, bespoke postwar modernity in the manner of the Color Field paintings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko or the architecture of Eero Saarinen. Mr. Scaglietti in the 1950s designed the bloodred skin of the 375mm sports car that film director Roberto Rossellini, the master of neorealist cinema, gave to his wife, Ingrid Bergman.

Sculptor Jordan Griska couldn't talk for long Monday. "I'm in the middle of lifting an airplane," he said over the phone from his West Philadelphia studio, an old trolley shed on Haverford Avenue. The airplane in question, a decommissioned Cold War submarine bomber, has taken on a new life in Griska's hands. It has become a work of art, a sculptural installation for the pristine Lenfest Plaza. There, in the shadow of Claes Oldenburg's newly installed giant paintbrush at Broad and Cherry Streets, Griska's plane will rest, nose driven into the ground next to the historic Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, 82, the Iraqi sculptor who created many of Baghdad's most famous landmarks and who led the effort to recover works of art looted from the National Museum of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, died Sept. 12 in Amman, Jordan, where he had gone for medical treatment. The cause was kidney failure, his son, Yasser Mohammed, said. In the 1960s and '70s, Mr. Hikmat created many sculptures that were inspired by the Middle Eastern fables 1,001 Nights and were placed in bustling parts of the city.

THEY'RE NOT done. No sooner was the spectacular statue of Harry Kalas finally unveiled last night than its grass-roots organizers and sculptor were dreaming up the next step, channeling Harry as they spoke. "Obviously, Harry can stand on his own," Lawrence J. Nowlan, the sculptor, said afterward, as the throng of fans who surrounded the unveiling ceremony took turns touching and admiring the statue placed in the plaza below Harry the K's in the leftfield corner of Citizens Bank Park.

FRANK BENDER, who helped identify hundreds of victims of violence and bring many of the perpetrators to justice over a long career as a forensic sculptor, was confronted by his greatest challenge that fall of 2000. He had to sculpt a face where there was no face. The skeletal remains of a woman had been found in a wooded area of Manlius, N.Y., a town near Syracuse. The skull was a shell and there was no face. Told it was impossible to create something out of nothing, Bender rose to the challenge.

Virginia Wells Maloney, 98, a sculptor and volunteer who was active on the local social scene for 60 years, died of pneumonia Tuesday, July 5, at Beaumont, a retirement community in Bryn Mawr. Mrs. Maloney was a member of the Women's Committee of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for more than 50 years and served more than 45 years on the board of the Charlotte Cushman Club, a residence in Philadelphia for actresses on tour. She remained involved after the club became the Charlotte Cushman Foundation in 1999.