Sculptor

Joseph Charles Deissroth, 46, formerly of South Philadelphia, a teacher, sculptor, and Mummer, died of esophageal cancer Friday, June 11, at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh. Mr. Deissroth taught art at Conwell-Egan Catholic High School in Fairless Hills for five years and then taught art at Roman Catholic High School for eight years. In August 2009, he and his wife moved to Pittsburgh, her hometown. He planned to pursue his teaching career there but became ill in September 2009.

William E. Walton, 79, of Philadelphia, a sculptor and printmaker who also taught for many years at Moore College of Art, died of brain cancer Friday, April 9, at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden. Mr. Walton started his artistic career in printmaking but quickly added sculptures to his exhibitions. His minimalist sculptures, which were often installation pieces of found objects assembled to evoke a sense of continuity in nature, became more well-known in the art world.

The face and physique belong to a seasoned fighter. Arms and shoulders bulge with muscles. And the face carries the puffy eyes earned in the boxing ring's school of hard knocks. This is Joey Giardello in his prime, a South Philly legend who reigned as world middleweight champion from 1963 to 1965 and was inducted last week into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. A year after his death, his likeness is now emerging from clay at a makeshift Port Richmond studio, where sculptor Carl LeVotch is trying to capture the man he once knew as a neighbor in Cherry Hill.

"Nothing in ordinary life is ordinary to Bill Freeland," Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohoe wrote in a 2006 review of his sculptures at Swarthmore College. Working in Chester County and County Mayo, Ireland, Mr. Freeland "reacts to his Irish surroundings in particular as to a living presence," Donahue wrote. His abstract sculptures, she said, are an homage "not only to old-time farm machinery and antique processes, but to the abiding values and traditions of country life.

Bernardo Corman is only 51, so perhaps it's premature to call this his magnum opus. But for now, it's certainly the leading contender. The piece in question is CaddyCorner, his whimsical salute to the Sputnik-era styling of the '59 Cadillac. Now at a Chester foundry waiting shipment to the Kuwaiti businessman who commissioned it, this monumental bronze sculpture is about the size (18 feet along its outer curve) and weight (more than two tons) of a real Cadillac. Corman, an "automotive sculptor," specializes in "marrying the mechanical to the organic, the bombastic to the comical.

Charlotte "Chim" Calwell Stokes, 93, formerly of Mount Airy, an accomplished artist and horticulturist whose sculpture of dancing children is on exhibit at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, died of heart failure March 18 at Cathedral Village, a retirement community in Roxborough. Mrs. Stokes' bronze bust of a Blackfoot chief is part of the Montana Historical Society's collection and currently in the governor's office in Helena, Mont. Other sculptures are in private collections, and some decorate Cathedral Village, where she had lived for 17 years.

Music is back - if it was ever away. Music as an inspiration for two painters, a sculptor and photographer is the theme of a lively exhibit, "Music as Muse," at Bucks County Community College in Newtown. Some of these artists are better known for their love of music than others. Paul Keene, the strongest voice in the exhibit, is well-known for his interest in places, communities, jazz and memory. This distinguished painter weaves it all together seamlessly in his partial abstractions.

It's time to say happy birthday to Ben Franklin. Why not celebrate that Jan. 17 occasion with a visit today to the American Philosophical Society, America's first learned society, founded by Franklin in 1743? Featured there is an exhibit, "Manuscript As Muse," centered on Rebecca Kamen's 13 sculptures that were inspired by the treasure trove of scientific rare books and manuscripts in the society's collection. This Philadelphia native, who lives in Virginia, has included a piece, Magic Circle of Circles, relating to Franklin's experiments and observations on electricity.

Over the last 200 years, Beethoven's Fidelio has been the bearer - however haphazardly - of some of the most monumental music heard in the opera house. But perhaps only with its new Opera Company of Philadelphia production will it also become a living, breathing, singing piece of sculpture. The creator is the internationally noted artist Jun Kaneko, a jovially unassuming, wire-haired presence these days at the Academy of Music, where his set and costume designs are - somewhat unconventionally - taking shape.

SIPPING COFFEE in the sunroom of his rambling rural property in the Touraine region of France, Harold Jacobs contemplated the idea that his life might have been different if he had not met the sculptor Alexander Calder. When the former chairman of painting at Moore College of Art met Calder and his family on a visit to nearby Sach? in the late '60s, "what impressed me was the simplicity and richness of his life," Jacobs recalled recently. "It didn't need any kind of superfluous attractions of the city.