An Introduction to Michael Garman and His Sculptures
Michael Garman was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1938. Michael grew up in central Texas where he developed his spirit of hard work and determination.
From Texas, Michael traveled to Los Angeles where he briefly apprenticed in photography. From there Michael continued his travels into Mexico, Central, and South America. While traveling Michael met and lived among the working people, capturing their lives in sculpture, on film, and in his heart. When Michael returned to the United States, he would continue his vagabond lifestyle in Dallas, San Francisco, and Philadelphia before settling in the Pikes Peak region in 1971.
Michael had a deep-rooted belief that art should be available to everyone. “Art for the People,” he called it. Because of this ideal, Michael worked not just to create these expressive characters, but also to perfect a method of reproduction that made his artwork affordable and available to everyday people.
Michael’s sculptures are not portraits, but are composite sketches of bits and pieces of humanity that Michael encountered along his travels. The same is true of his large-scale City Scape Street Scenes. The bay window or sidewalks in these scenes may have come from San Francisco, Philadelphia, or any one of a hundred places that Michael lived and traveled through.