Jane DeDecker

Also View Jane DeDecker's Outdoor Sculpture

Family is the focus of Jane DeDecker’s life and art. She and husband Kyle live in the same town as her parents, Barbara and Raymond, and eight of her nine siblings. Her sister Maggie is her business manager. Another sister Jo, an art historian, helps put the finishing touches on her bronzes. Wax chasing is her mother’s domain, while her father makes bases, makes deliveries and does handy-work for the operation. DeDecker occasionally enlists the rest of the family to help make molds or apply patinas. And 12 nephews and nieces are a constant source of subject material.

Childhood innocence is DeDecker’s bread and butter theme. Although her portfolio includes solitary adult figures, more typical DeDecker subjects include a group of kids playing on monkey bars, two boys pushing off on a bike and a trio of girls huddled under an umbrella.

The bustling activity in her sculptures mirrors her aggressive technique. Watching DeDecker attack clay in her studio has all the drama of a life-and-death scene from an action thriller. She approaches her work with, as she says, “a kind of fury.” Her concentration is total; she glares at the clay with the intensity of a boxer trying to intimidate a challenger before a bout. She quickly spots flaws and her large, strong hands rearrange the clay to her liking.

A key element of DeDecker’s storytelling is her loose style. “Some people call my work unfinished because it is more rough than smooth,” she says. “I don’t want the surface of my figures to seem mechanical or static. A loose, more fragmented and open surface gives a figure greater energy.”

DeDecker’s style also leaves room for interpretation. “The finished piece isn’t the end,” she says. “The sculpture lives beyond me, my studio and the foundry. I want viewers to see themselves and their lives in my sculptures.”