The Mattie Kelly Arts Center Galleries

Deborah Masters is a highly gifted figurative sculptor whose specialty is heads. She constructs works that are both much greater than life-size and also tabletop portraits. Masters' art is that of an undertaking that is both otherworldly and artistic: the point at which longing and the accomplishment of the hand meet. The heads, almost all rendered in clay, are invested with sharply delineated features, an aura of profound seriousness, and various collars or ties circling their necks and descending down…