Karen Jobe Templeton

Award-winning sculptor Karen Jobe Templeton is best known for Heroes Among Us, her work memorializing the miners who died in Utah’s Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster. Also for her steel and glass sculptures based on petroglyphs of the prehistoric peoples of North America and for her portraiture (3-D, bas relief and monumental). No matter what the medium –steel, glass, bronze, copper, and even paper – her public installations have earned her a reputation as an artist whose works are as moving as they are unique. For example, the towering 11-foot tall steel and glass The Storyteller has been an iconic landmark on Grand Junction, Colorado’s Main Street for over a decade – a beloved work of art for locals and a popular photo opportunity for tourists. In contrast, the two paneled 12-foot long all night conversations, has intrigued viewers as they stand at a distance searching for faces in the piece and then are pulled up close to the work to search for the 80 or 90 words that poet Nancy Takacs selected to be stamped into the steel of the sculpture. Awards include: the American Artists Professional League’s Kathryn Thayer Hobson Memorial Award, Leonard J. Meiselman Memorial Award for Traditional Sculpture, AAPL; Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Arts Club’s Anna Hyatt Huntington Bronze Medal for Sculpture, and three separate awards from the Portrait Society of America, including First Place, Portfolio.