Joan
 Wood and mixed media, 22"x21"x6"

The wooden carved sculptures of Joe Brubaker channel sources of inspiration from Spanish colonial santos and retablo objects to Egyptian tomb figures and Buddhist stone carvings. In his new series entitled “Somnambulists”, Brubaker has taken the work to an entirely new level.

These “sleepwalkers”, are the inhabitants of dreams and far-off places. Their sensitive and introspective faces have a humanity that belies their tough materials of wood, metal and bronze.   Brubaker is concerned with issues of decay, transformation and beauty in these works.  Rusted and torn edges combine with delicately carved facial structures.  Each sculpture has a fierce beauty wrought with unerring instinct and meticulous attention to detail.  They command their space with an unmistakable stamp of character having evolved in the process of their creation (which in this case has a lot to do with saws, chisels and hammers.)

Joe Brubaker was born in Lebanon Missouri and studied art at Long Beach State and Sacramento State Universities. He received his MFA at UCLA. He began his art career as a painter, but soon found inspiration from his travels where he encountered Mexican Santos and indigenous arts from many cultures. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Seattle, Santa Fe, Boston, southern and Northern California where he exhibited with Susan Cummins Gallery in Mill Valley.