The Looking Glass Art Gallery & Studio





Shimon Drory

Drory was born in 1935 in the old city of Jerusalem. During the Independence war he participated in the youth-brigade of the Hagana, in the blockaded city. After the Jordanian Legion occupied the old city he managed to escape from the prisoners of war gathering location, through Zion Gate back to Katamon, which was in Hagana's hands. After being recruited to the I.D.F., he served with the Marines, upon the "Miznak" destroyer. During the Sinai war he was recruited again and finished his army service as an officer. After finishing his active army duty, he worked as a senior sailor with the commercial fleet.

 


Shimon Drory

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Mr. Drory made his first steps as an artist, creating the "Gate of Images" at his home and teaching Art. In 1960 he married Ziva Grabovski of Yavne'el and today he is a father of 4 and a grandfather to 6. In Kiryat Tivon he was a member of the local consul, and crated two monuments.
He earned his first graduate degree from the Faculty of Art & Education and his second degree in Educational Administration & Supervision course from the Haifa University.
Drory was qualified as a community worker at the Jerusalem University' Social School, and after he graduated, he was appointed as the consul of the "Gap Bridging Department" in the Haifa University.
In this retrospective album, the artist represents part of his art pieces, summarizing 30 years of creation, where the main theme is the human image. Part of the figures are abstract, made of his favorite materials Carrera marble and Marmar marble, which he learned to know and appreciate while working in workshops in Carrera, Italy. Part are metal, clay & concrete made in Israel and NewYork.

In the human image creation he expresses the beauty of women, and the strength of men. Gentleness and softness of the marble images were designed with the impression of nature. While visiting Florence, Venice, Athena, Paris, and Luxembourg, he realized that placing human sculptures in empty spaces in nature or in the town square, enables each person there & than to have an emotional experience under the sky.

He developed working skill with marble, forming a human figure that immerges out of the stone, revealing the sculpture that was hidden wrapped inside. A rock that is holding within it variety of forms and processes as they are kept frozen. For the artist, this is the essence of work, that was done and completed, out of feeling deep love to life and to the forms in nature. His belief is full with hope and the yearn for creativity has no limits.

Drory looks for inspiration only by observing nature. Achieving perfection will be accomplished through hard work, caused by the constant need to know and understand all the possibilities and limits of the material and the sculpturing laws. He explains the dilemma between the creation of expressive figures when shaping the stone, and those which are gentle, delicate plastics motives, that require to select the right marble for the perfect shape.

He was influenced a lot by the enceinte Greek figurative sculpturing, while shaping the human body, and had mixed feelings about changing to the modern abstract sculpturing. He changes the lines repeatedly, creating a rhythmic movement of concave and arched waves that express the position which created them. Drory was inspired greatly by his father, and obtained spiritual & material values working in his father's workshop in the old city of Jerusalem. As a child he was impressed by the gold and copper ornaments, by the huge fresco paintings that were on the high dome ceiling of the synagogue "Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid" where his father used to pray and of which the beauty and height overlooked all the churches and mosques of Jerusalem.

Drory contributed about 10 big monumental sculptures which are placed around different communities around Israel. He worked at late with his mentor and teacher Michael Gross, who was a great sculpture for him, and together they built an environmental monument in Seminar Hakibutsim.
Among his teachers and masters other than Michael Gross, the sculptors Dan & Doroty Cafri, and the painters Sima Slonim, and Arie Navon from Ein-Hod.

Drory worked at the sculpturing workshops, in Carrera, Italy. He specialized in several kinds of marbles at the CENTRO STUDIO DEL MARMO CARRERA. He was also teaching arts in several "Special Education" Schools in the fields of wood & metal sculpturing among them Ramat Hadassah, Mechora & Oranim. In the last few years he was helping IDF to rehabilitate families who lost their sons in the army and was active in "Hanoar Vehachlutz" movement, where he established the sculpturing workshops for the U.S. summer camps Rama, Glen Spay, Kutz and Monte Silo N.Y., with the help of Prof. Dani Edelman, and Rabbi Allan Smith.

Today, while retired Drory is sculpturing in materials as - Marble-Carrera, Basalt-stone, Metal, Wood, Ceramic & Glass in his studio in Yavne'el.

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The Looking Glass Art
Gallery & Studio, Ltd.

229 Main Ave. Hawley, PA 18428
Telephone: (570) 226-0782
Email: info@lookingglassartgallery.com

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