Michele Chapin

Michele Chapin has been a working California artist for the past 35 years, exhibiting and receiving countless awards for her sculptures and contributions to the Ventura community where she has lived. She attended the University of California in Santa Cruz studying drawing, printmaking, jewelry, sculpting in bronze, clay and metal, art history and psychology. As a founding member of the Santa Cruz Art Center, she had the opportunity to work with several professional artists working in a variety of mediums, and it was there, she carved her first stone. In 1987, Michele relocated to Ventura and with the purchase of a minimal amount of tools, began teaching herself to carve. Many of her sculptures are created from stones that she has quarried from local deserts in California, as well as purchased from other states and countries. Desert Flower, a sculpture created during this time, was one of the first pieces purchased for the Ventura Municipal Art Collection on permanent display at City Hall. Her first major project, collaborating with Richard Sanders, were creating works for the Ventura County Symphony Design House Gardens. These sculptures incorporated carved marble spheres that hydroplaned with the use of water. Later, she was commissioned to create and install a monumental granite sphere fountain commissioned by U.S. Sales Corporation in Moorpark, California. These fountains were the first of their kind to be created in the United States. In 2009, Mayor Christy Weir awarded her with the Mayor’s Arts Award for Artist In The Community. In 2010 The Ventura County Arts Council awarded Michele with the Salvador Bravo Art Star Award for Artist in the County. In July 2010 she was the first sculptor featured with a 3-month solo exhibition, at the grand reopening of the Ventura County Museum. The Museum showcased 14 of her stone sculptures, with major works on loan from private collections. In 2011 Divine Balance was purchased by the Museum for the permanent collection. In 2013 Michele exhibited at the Santa Paula Art Museum a retrospect of her sculptures with painter Susan Petty in the exhibit titled “Old Hands New Worksâ€. In 2014 Michele had a solo exhibition “Chasing Beauty†– at Minan Gallery in Los Angeles. The Chasing Beauty series was inspired by a daily practice of photographing the insides of flowers with an iPhone 5 camera. In 2015 Michele was awarded the Artwalk Ventura “Artist Of Distinction†for her artwork and long-standing contributions as an Art Advocate to her community. In 2018 Michele created a series of small sculptures “Flower Scapes†inspired from the “Chasing Beauty Series†…and charred plant material carried into the studio from the wind and the Thomas Fire in December 2017. Michele was the featured artist and cover story in the October 2019 Arts Issue in Ventura’s Ventana Magazine. For the past 2 years, a selection of her sculptures has been on exhibit at a photography gallery in Northern California. Michele has worked tirelessly as a community arts activist, teacher, and stone sculptor creating public and private commissions and community exhibitions at Stoneworks Studios in Ventura for over 30 years. Stoneworks Studios has featured 100of established and emerging Artists, and Musicians year-round. Currently, the studio is open daily by appointment only.