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Alice Carroll - Born Into Art
For those of you who haven't yet had the good fortune to
take one of Sanctuary
Arts' Jewelry & Metalsmithing classes, here is a mini
history and song of praise for a “sterling” instructor.
Alice is one of the lucky artists whose family embraced the
arts and encouraged her own artistic endeavors. Her grandfather was a painter,
taught industrial arts and was a technical director at the Ogunquit Playhouse.
Her aunt was an actor on Broadway and later LA; her father a sculptor and
scenic artist. Her mother was a set designer, working on many shows in NY and
then moved into TV with Saturday Night Live, and finally was the Art Director
for NBC's Today show until she retired (Alice and her identical twin spent much
of their childhoods backstage). She moved here to help with Alice's 3 sons and
is now Curator of The Ogunquit Heritage Museum. Alice credits her mom with
guiding and encouraging her to go to Art school. Alice's sister, a student with a fabulous
verbal memory, studied Art History and Historic Preservation and is now the
director of the NYC Landmarks Department.
A visual learner and manual problem solver, Alice attended drawing classes and then art school,
majoring in Jewelry and Metalsmithing and studying Printmaking. While struggling
with a three Dimensional design class, something clicked and Alice combined her
love of metal with jewelry and 3D design. After college, she worked fabricating
jewelry at Summer Wind in Portsmouth. Wanting to move beyond working with gold
and setting gem stones, and wanting to grow as an artist, she went back to RIT
as a graduate student, learning metal techniques to
make vessels and larger
sculptural pieces. Alice worked with Len Urso and Mark Stanitz and was
influenced by Ceramics Professor Rick Hirsh with his philosophies regarding
functional and non functional vessels. She met Marvin Jensen, a Penland North
Carolina artist and teacher, who
encouraged her to apply for the Penland artist in residence position which she
held for two years, learning the ropes in marketing and running a wholesale
jewelry business. When her time was up, she came back to Portsmouth to be with family and friends, running a
wholesale jewelry business and making larger- scale metal pieces.
In 1997 she started teaching with Wendy Hammer at Wisteria
Tree and then taught at Heartwood College of Art. Seven years ago I was
fortunate to be able to coax Alice to teach metalsmithing here at Sanctuary
Arts and have been very pleased. I've taken a class or two with Alice and have
co-taught with her a couple of times. She has the amazing ability to remain
unflappable while communicating her expertise in this very technical field.
Patient and encouraging, Alice teaches both novices and experienced students,
with many students returning again and again for the social and technical
aspects of a well run classroom. Alice obviously loves teaching, saying that
the sounds of students filing and sawing is music to her ears. Seeing students
blossom, working with them to accomplish their design objectives is an
inspiration as they create pieces she hasn't thought of.
Currently Alice is doing some artistic soul searching,
revamping goals and developing a new line of jewelry. Her challenge is
designing forms from nature
while continuing her love of architecture and
construction. She wants to keep the simplicity and directness in the
construction, along with the added ornamental elements, continuing who she is
as an artist, but becoming a little more figurative and a little less abstract
in design. She does a lot of custom work, a nice niche for her since she can
come up with her own designs for some of her established customers. A mother of
3 boys, she has a separate studio off the back of her house, allowing her to
work odd hours and late at night. Her older son is very artistic and often
comes to do projects with her in the studio. Continuing in the family
tradition, all of her boys love going to museums and her husband is a musician
who gives guitar lessons, plays a lot of instruments, and works with bands, playing
out frequently.
I feel fortunate that we have Alice as part of our Sanctuary
Arts “Family” and highly recommend her classes.
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