National Sculpture Society Presents the Herbert Adams Memorial Award to Bruner F. Barrie

Bruner F. Barrie lives and works for sculpture.  His passion for the art form started as a teenager, when he worked for Alex J. Ettl, founder of Sculpture House, making the company’s premier product-ROMA Plastilina.  After serving from 1966 – 1970 in the United States Air Force, Strategic Air Command, as a Medic stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, LA, Barrie returned to Sculpture House.  Over the years, Mr. Barrie became and is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. In 2015, he oversaw the company’s relocation to Fort Pierce, Florida after 50 years of business in New York and New Jersey.

Barrie has an extensive knowledge of Sculpture House’s production of tools and accessories for clay modeling, mold making & casting, stone carving, wood carving and ceramics.  To share this knowledge with sculptors, he authored two books:  A Sculptors Guide to Tools and Materials, now in its second edition, and Mold Making Casting & Patina.  Mr. Barrie is a member of the Association of Lifecasters International (Summit, NJ), the International Sculpture Center (Hamilton, NJ) and the National Arts Materials Trade Association (Cornelius, NC). He has been a patron of the National Sculpture Society (NSS) since 1989 and served two terms as a Board Member.

Mr. Barrie’s generous personality and contagious enthusiasm has long made him a favorite with NSS staff, Board members, and sculptors – for whom he has been known to create personalized tools. In 2002, Mr. Barrie established the Sculpture House Annual Award, working with Jack North of Chavant and Marc Fields of The Compleat Sculptor to create an endowment to support the award in perpetuity.  The Sculpture House Award is presented annually by the National Sculpture Society in recognition of those who support figurative sculpture or those who excel at figurative sculpture.

National Sculpture Society will present Barrie with the Herbert Adams Memorial Award on June 24th at NSS’s annual Honors and Awards Dinner in New York City. The Herbert Adams Memorial Medal was first presented in 1947, and is awarded only as the occasion arises for service to American sculpture, or to a sculptor for outstanding achievement.