Jack Dowd is quickly making a name for himself as one of America's foremost, modern sculptors. His life-size creations, viewed on continuing exhibition in museums and galleries throughout the nation, are recognized by Who's Who In American Art and are collected by private, public and corporate patrons from Florida to Australia.
 
Gallery owner Frank Oehlschlaeger says of the artist, "In my forty years of business, I have never seen an artist become as popular and successful in so little time as Jack Dowd."
 
However, success came humbly for the artist.  Born in 1938 in New York City, Dowd was raised by a hard-working middle class family.  He had a particular fondness for art and was often caught sketching while in class.  After graduating from Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., Dowd became a High School Art teacher.
 
A college-age hobby of carving tiki's turned Dowd on to sculpture. He sculpted his first crude pieces with an ax until he saved enough money to buy a chainsaw. The power tool made it easy for the artist to quickly blend his imagination and interest in cartooning to create his first folk caricatures. He then began a two-summer tour to art fairs around the country, producing and showing his work under the auspices of a major chainsaw company. Turning out a carving every day, Dowd was labeled by the Media as the "world's fastest sculptor."
 
But the novelty soon wore off and Dowd began to demand more from himself. In the 70's, he experimented with smaller, more refined tools that gave depth and magnitude to his work. He also took more time to create each piece. "I wanted my artwork to be physical and large. I didn't want to sit in a confined space just painting pictures." It was at this time that Dowd's work started to become known for its whimsical-expressionist style.
 
The turning point in Dowd's career came in 1982 when he moved to Florida and was intrigued by the diverse culture he found there. Introducing humor and color, Dowd began to comment on social mores as he saw them. His first major piece to receive widespread recognition was "I Love New York," a punk rocker that earned Dowd best of show in the 1989 Coconut Grove Arts Festival. To obtain painstaking attention to character, the artist now spends two to three months sculpting a single piece of artwork. When he isn't in his studio, Dowd is likely to be found looking for inspiration for his next sculpture. The artist feels that an important part of his work is to keep in touch with humanity--whether it's a trip to Miami's trendy South Beach or rollerblading to a local K-Mart. Once Dowd locates his subject, he creates the character by taking parts of several live models and sketching them together. The result is the birth of a person who has never lived before. Art critic Victor Forbes of Sun Storm magazine says of Dowd's sculpture, "The secret to his success...is that he has simplified an artistic process and genre and at the same time made it larger than life, more
in an emotional sense than in size."

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