Lawrence Fane

1933 - 2008

Lawrence Fane was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and came to Boston in the early 1950s to study at Harvard in preparation for becoming a doctor. His true passion, however, was drawing and he had the great good fortune to take a drawing class with sculptor George Demetrios who taught in both Boston and Gloucester. After graduating from college, Fane chose art over medicine, enrolled in the Boston Museum School and took additional courses with Demetrios. In time, Fane would become apprentice to Demetrios and finally his assistant, spending many summers on Cape Ann. In 1960, Fane was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome which allowed him to live and study at the American Academy in Rome for three years.

Writing about his work in the late 1970s, Lawrence Fane noted that although his early training was as a figure sculptor, in time he expanded his choice of models from human to other forms in nature. "The first pieces I made," he wrote "were figures whose weights were influenced by the shapes of boulders-rock-like figures. These sculptures led to more and more obsessive studies of rock formations until, some years later, I could see my sculptures rather as rocks that resembled figures. Now, in the past two years, I am coming full circle, trying to make rocks that are really rocks."