Ruth Duckworth, Modernist Sculptor

Duckworth is most often celebrated for her work in porcelain, which has the opaque, milky presence of bone, gives off a sensual glow, and inspires a surprisingly emotional response. As she says, “there’s no other material that so effectively communicates both fragility and strength.” The steadily productive eighty-seven-year-old artist has been sculpting evocative forms from ceramic and metal since she fled Nazi Germany at age seventeen; her influences range from ancient Egyptian sculpture and Henry Moore to, most evident in her porcelain works, Isamu Noguchi and Constantin Brancusi. Duckworth eschews naming any of her work, so as to refrain from giving any suggestions to viewers (though she does profess a deep concern for ecological issues). Contrasting with her delicate porcelain tabletop pieces, her figurative work is more to the point: human and animal figures strike expressive and even humorous poses. Also included in this retrospective, which includes some eighty-five pieces and spans almost fifty years, are ceramic murals, carved stone pieces, and bronze castings. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org