Artists Sculptors Guild
 
Sassona Sakel Norton email: sassnorton@aol.com website: www.sassonanorton-sculpture.com The personal interpretation of the figure in Sassona Norton’s large and dramatic bronze sculptures can be traced to her experience as a painter. Born in Israel, Norton had her first solo show of paintings in her early twenties, shortly after graduating from Tel Aviv University. While continuing to show and to win various prizes, she also published articles about art in “Yediot Achronot”, the largest daily newspaper in the country. In 1974, Sassona Norton immigrated to the US and enrolled for the next four years in the Art Students’ League, where she won the Isabel Bishop Merit scholarship. In 1980, “A Yellow Night”, Norton’s large reclining nude, was published in “Twentieth Century Masters of Erotic Art” by Bradley Smith (Crown Publishers, NY), which also has works by Picasso, Rodin, Calder and Dali. In 1981, Norton was included in the show “Eight Young New Yorkers on the Horizon” which traveled throughout the country. In 1983, “The Rain Prayer”, a large painting of hands, was published in the 16 volume series “Discover Art” by Laura H. Chapman (Davis Publications). In 1984, a second solo show in New York, at Sutton gallery, was praised by the critic Peter Fingesten for its “strength, poetic, erotic, masculine, intellectual and sculptural nature”. A hiatus, following the loss of her husband, convinced Norton that her visual language was indeed purely sculptural, and she decided to focus exclusively on sculpting. In 2000, Norton won the Huntington merit medal for her sculpture “The Edge of Rest” at “The National Arts Club” show. In 2003, after winning an international competition, Norton was commissioned to design and build a 9/11 memorial in Pennsylvania. The main component of the $100,000 memorial consists of a pair of 8 feet tall hands that rise on top of a tilted column and lift into the sky a torn and burnt I-beam from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Underwritten by Montgomery County, the 18 feet tall memorial was installed on the plaza of the County Courthouse and unveiled in September 2005. In 2006, Norton had a major show of her sculptures at the Morris Museum, Morristown New Jersey. The show, at the 4500 square feet of the main gallery, was extended by popular demand to last over 6 months. The hard cover book “Sassona Norton Sculpture”, published by the museum in connection with the show, includes articles by Ann Landi and Hilarie Sheets of ARTnews and The New York Times. “The work here”, wrote Star Ledger art critic, Dan Bishop, “has vigorously modeled surface and expressively exaggerated details…the sensual tension of bodies or limbs in convulsive movement is everywhere…the human figure is struggling to break free, possibly the oldest tradition in sculpture that we have”. mailto:sassnorton@aol.comhttp://www.sassonanorton-sculpture.comshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1
Fleeting Light
The Last of Summer
Unquenchable Thirst
First Rain
9/11 Memorial -  Norristown, PA