About M.L. Snowden

M.L. Snowden

M.L. Snowden has spent her life surrounded by sculpture. Her earliest memories and every waking moment of her life include sculpture. From the age of four, she played in her father’s sculpture studio watching him with the unwavering attention of a child enthralled and enchanted. At the age of seven she began working with clay along side her father.

As she grew, she learned Rodin’s transcendental sculpting techniques from her father, George Holburn Snowden, who had in turn been a favored student of Robert George Eberhard, a protege of the great French sculptors Auguste Rodin, Anton Mercie and Victor Peters. Each of the generations-the French master, Swiss-born Eberhard, and American-born George Snowden-has contributed to the evolution of a unique heritage of sculpting that finds its contemporary expression through the spectacular works of M.L. Snowden.

Part of the heritage comes through the original sculpting tools of Auguste Rodin that have been passed from mentor to protege for three generations. The tools, some of which she uses in sculpting her own works, are a symbol for Snowden– a symbol of the awe-inspiring foundation upon which her work is based. They provide a physical connection with the artistic inheritance that has been passed down to her and represent the utter devoting to sculpture of the artist who are part of Rodin’s Legacy.

Snowden’s own devotion to sculpture has been acknowledged through the awards that have been bestowed upon her and her work. In 1974 at the age of 22, she was awarded post-graduate study grants to the Vatican Collections in Rome; the Uffizi in Florence, Italy and the Louvre in Paris. At the age of 36, she received the inaugural Alex Ettl Grant from the National Sculpture Society for “Lifetime Achievement in American Sculpture.” In 1992, Snowden won the world’s most prestigious award in sculpture, The International Rodin Competition in Tokyo, Japan. In the year 2000, Snowden has been named sculptor for the Main Altar of the new $165 million Los Angeles Cathedral.

In the same forms, she communicates the nobler side of man’s endeavors and issues a call to humanity, challenging us to recognize certain truths that are universal to all creation-whether it be organic or geologic in nature.

• Sculpture Collector’s Top 10 Greatest Figurative Sculptors of the 19^th, 20^th & 21^st   Centuries

• Paul Manship (20^th Cent.);  Aniceto Marinas (20^th Cent.);  Alfred Gilbert (20^th Cent.);  Auguste Rodin (19^th Cent.); 
• M.L Snowden (20^th /21^st Cent.);  Daniel Chester French (20^th Cent.) Augustus Sain-Gaudens (19^th Cent). Harriet Whitney Frishmuth (20^th Cent.), Frederic Remington (19^th Cent.)