Untitled, 1994
Metal, Pink Raffia Ribbon, 54" x 7 1/2" x 3/4"
Donald Lipski was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1947. He earned a B.A. in American History in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In Madison, Lipski discovered ceramics working with Don Reitz, which led him to receive an M.F.A. in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1973 where he studied with Richard DeVore and Michael Hall. Lipski enjoyed rapidly growing recognition with his early installation Gathering Dust. In 1978 he won the first of three National Endowment for the Arts awards, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993, and the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome in 2000. His work is included in the collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, and many other museums. In recent years, Lipski has focused his efforts on creating large-scale works for public spaces and is today one of the most identifiable, prolific and original public artists in the United States. Among his most celebrated works are The Yearling, outside the Denver Public Library, Sirshasana, hanging in the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, and F.I.S.H. at the San Antonio River Walk in Texas. There are 20 others across the United States. Donald Lipski currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York.