About Norman Gardner

Norman Gardner was a New York-born artist with career spanning more than seventy years.  He received a bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering from City College of New York and went on to obtain a masters degree in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, being offered a position on the faculty, even before having finished his own studies there.  Gardner then taught in the art school for the next twelve years.

Gardner’s Birth of Venus, made by him from sheets of pure silver except for its hair made of gold, was acquired by an art collector living on 5th Avenue. Last he knew, it was displayed by the collector next to a painting by Picasso and adjacent to a sculpture by Botero. Gardner has shown his pieces in upwards of fifty galleries, both in the U.S. and internationally.  He has produced a wide array of sculptural pieces, ranging from small, ornamental pieces, to larger-than-life outdoor monumental pieces and has sold hundreds of his works over the years.

Gardner began sculpting by carving wood. He could produce a novelty like the above wood “ball” and chain and sell it, while still a child. He evolved to produce his own unique style of sculptures, using combinations of wood, bronze, silver, gold and stainless steel.  His first gallery showing occurred in the mid-sixties, at the Schoneman Gallery, then one of the premier galleries in New York City.  Gardner walked in with one of his silver sculptures and the gallery owner immediately put it on display in the window.  By the next day, the piece was sold. 

Gardner’s sculptural work places an emphasis on planes, shapes, spaces and intersections, giving his work a dimensionality and universality.  He was inspired early on by Archipinko, Dubuffet and Picasso, and his work has a playful sensuality, evokes harmonious beauty, and frequently evinces a distinct sense of humor, a blend of Gardner’s uncanny yet quirky sense of humor. At times, his work penetrates through to a more frank absurdist reality, such as when impregnated.  While unmistakably an accomplished sculptor, Gardner was very much an artistic Renaissance Man, who pursued many diverse artistic endeavors, spanning painting, drawing, print-making, photography, jewelry-making, knitting, mosaics, collage, landscape architecture, book-binding, woodworking, written prose and poetry, chocolate-making and more.

Gardner’s 2006 work of art, Celebration, stands seven feet tall and is among the largest outdoor monumental sculptural pieces the artist has created.—which has been on public display in Palo Alto, California for 18 years. This stainless steel piece, commissioned to mark the entrance of a private dayschool, stood in front of the school at 450 San Antonio Road in Palo Alto. You can view its development from concept to installation, a process which follows the steps that Gardner took to create most all of sculptures on the Work-in-Process page.

Norman Gardner, whose artistic talent was recognized and honored as young as five years old, loved art of all kinds and devoted his entire career to the creative process. With a body of work numbering in the hundreds, Gardner succeeded in bringing beauty, sensuality, humanity and, at times, sardonic humor and social commentary to life with his creations.

We endeavor to showcase his entire body of work on these pages, although there are many pieces, especially older ones, that we have no photographs of.  Additionally, we believe that there were many early wood carvings, as well as later sculptural pieces that were sold by the artist directly or through galleries that featured his work over the years, for which we have no records of either.  Therfore, please consider these pages as being just a mere sampling of the ouvre that Norman Gardner has produced over the years.

Gardner did sketches with pencil and charcoal, painted with oils and acrylics on both stretched canvass and particle board, created multimedia collages, worked with clay, cardboard, wood, epoxy, leather, wool, as well as a range of metals and precious metals for his sculptures and jewelry designs.  He loved photography and developed his own photos prior to the availability of digital photography. He crafted a number of unique ornamental mosaics and designed and built novel forms of furniture and home decor. 

Gardner also loved to write and showed a talent for weaving social critique essays in with his uniquely quirky sense of humor, around which he self-published several small books. He also loved family above all and he wrote many poignant letters, poems, and eventually a newsletter series he called “Grandpa Grams,” that he desktop published and sent out to his children. Norman Gardner, who loved jazz music, dancing, surfing, skiing and skateboarding, was constantly probing, exploring, learning new skills, tackling new technologies, applying his own vision and accepting no boundaries or constraints to his creative outflows.  We endeavor to showcase photos of much of his life’s artwork, and hope you find inspiration in his massive achievements.