‘Papscun describes his creative perspective as an outsider looking in on the world and inside himself.’

barbara reina/Ruralintelligence.com

about

Alan Papscun was born in Queens, New York, to parents who were good with their hands. What they couldn’t afford to buy they made or repaired; with his father they photographed, processed, printed, filmed and animated; they knitted, soldered, sewed; they built an entire house, with wooden circular stairs! What originally possessed Alan to major in business? Through the business of footwear and ultimately to the design of shoes, he quickly found his way back to creativity and his love of form, and then some architecture and, finally, art school.

The human form has directed Alan for many decades. From his initial focus as a shoe designer for a Massachusetts footwear manufacturer, he was awarded the American Designer Award by the Leather Industries of America in 1978. As a student of mostly classical figure sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art (BFA) he was honored with the 1989 Pace Gallery Award. He then moved to more abstracted forms, graduating with an MFA from Alfred University. In 2022, two of his pieces from the new Lead Shoe series were accepted into the Marblehead Arts Association Variations 2022 Exhibition, one being awarded third place in the 3-D category. In addition, seven of the Lead Shoe series have been included in two other recent juried exhibitions.

As the result of a pronounced congenital deformity of his left foot and leg, Alan views the human form from an outlying place. Every piece of sculpture is some form of self-portrait. He sculpts body ego, as it was formed, molded, perceived, internalized … and as it evolved. He sculpts spirit, emotional states, sensuality, primal forces. His work references wholeness, vulnerability, deformation, fragmentation, so as to reflect what it is to be imperfectly human, as we all ultimately exist.

Alan lives and works in Stockbridge amidst the beautiful Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, surrounded by his sculpted gardens and woods.