By Patti Nickell From Tribune News Service Port Aransas—Sitting on the deck of Grumble’s Seafood Co. overlooking the Port Aransas marina, I sipped a tropical drink and watched as the sky used every purple shade in the celestial crayon box in its final salute to the day. First came a pale swath of lavender, followed…

In the mid 19th-century, when the United States was still in search of its own artistic tradition, the sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis (circa 1844–1907) traveled to the Old World and combined the unique American culture with the beauty of European classicism. Her passion for sculpture had been first ignited in Boston, where she saw a…

After a heavy snowfall, a Michigan art teacher made the most of freshly-shoveled snow piles in her front yard to create dramatic sculptures. Her 3-dimensional, almost-lifesized “snow sharks” not only turned heads in the neighborhood, but they also quickly went viral. Jennifer Ramirez, 52, of Madison Heights, Michigan, has been a high school art teacher…

In 1820, the preeminent neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova completed a marble sculpture of George Washington that divided many viewers. Dressed as a Roman emperor, the over life-sized, seated Washington appears middle-aged, relaxed, and confident as he contemplates what he’s written on the tablet he holds. Canova inscribed “To the Great Nation of the United States of…

BERLIN—Two Davids greet visitors at the entrance to the exhibition “Donatello: The Inventor of the Renaissance” in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, and they couldn’t be more different. Having left Florence, Italy, for the first time, Donatello’s triumphant marble sculpture “David” dons classical drapery and a crown of wine grapes normally seen on Bacchus, the Roman god of…

BERLIN—In the solemn silence of the Bode Museum, I can almost hear the music as Antonio Canova’s nearly life-size sculpture titled “Dancing Girl With Cymbals” effortlessly twirls and pivots on one leg before me. She dances with a lightness seen only in flight, raising her hands above her head for drama and balance, while playing…

In 1962, successful German building contractor Reiner Winkler bought his first ivory artwork, a small 15th-century Gothic panel of the Nativity that was once part of a diptych. And he fell in love with the medium. From that small French piece, only a few inches tall, Winkler began what would become the world’s largest private collection…

Across the country, there are some great summer exhibitions that highlight fine European art and craftsmanship, from rare French medieval architecture and stained glass in Philadelphia, to remarkably colorful ancient Greek and Roman sculpture in New York, to Renaissance prints from Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands at the advent of printing, in Washington, D.C. Bringing…

A New Zealand artist has found a nonconventional way to use traditional woodcut printmaking tools to create splendidly colorful carved paintings, featuring animal and nature motifs. Following designs drawn lightly in chalk atop painted wooden panels, the artist, Hannah Jensen, 37, from Christchurch, New Zealand, plunges her engraving tool into the still slightly soft acrylic…

Growing up in Salzburg, Austria, Johanna Schwaiger was constantly surrounded by beautiful art—from the city’s Baroque architecture to majestic fountains and public gardens. “I always thought the masters of these works were of a distant past, … had magical skills, and I thought if I could only learn a little bit of what they knew,…