Mandy Stapleford is an award-winning artist whose work has been consistently exhibited in galleries from the East Coast to the West since 1987. In 2010, She was a ‘New Mexico Art in Public Places winner’ and has a permanent art installation in the Santa Fe Fire House. She has had a life-long love affair with architectural ornamentation and with the planet. Seeds, creatures both on land and in the sea, and classic gargoyles continue to strongly influence her work.
In 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 she co-created the immensely popular art and education exhibits ‘SEED’; 1, 2, 3 and 4, (www.seedtaos.org), which featured juried artists creating work inspired by macro-photography of seeds. These exhibitions also focused attention on environmental concerns involving seeds and the health of our planet in a way that only art can. Art and science education classes were also offered to the public through the SEED shows and over three thousand children and adults have viewed the exhibitions.
Her first forays into producing public exhibitions began in 1994 and 1995 when she created, curated and produced ‘Sculpture on the Creek’ I and II, which brought hundreds of viewers, many of whom might never enter a gallery, to a juried, multi-artist, outdoor art exhibition in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. These large exhibitions strive to include the ‘everyman’ to view, experience and get involved in art and to recognize art’s critical importance in our lives. Continuing her production of public art events; in the summers of 2011 and 2012 she produced on her property, live performances of Shakespeare’s plays, to overwhelming public success and which also raised money for the local Neighborhood Art Project (NAP).
Mandy continues to exhibit consistently, exhibiting her environmentally inspired clay sculpture and utilitarian ware.
“Beautiful hand-made things and inspired art should be a part of our everyday existence; in the gallery, in the yard or at the kitchen table. Art can remind us that life is a daily celebration.”
Originally from Arden, a small Shakespeare-inspired town in Delaware, Mandy settled in Taos, New Mexico in 1998 and built her straw-bale home and sculpture studio, where she currently lives and works. She is a graduate of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, with a BFA in Ceramics.