Claire at a show of her work at
the Redhouse, Syracuse, NY in 2006.

Claire Harootunian did not set out as a young woman to become an artist, that is, the distinguished sculptor, painter and collage artist that she became. Claire’s passion as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania was theater, and at Penn, Claire was a member of the prestigious Penn Players.

After graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1952, Claire married her high school sweetheart, and she and her husband had three sons. Her husband pursued an academic career, and while he was teaching at the University of Delaware, Claire began, in 1964, to take courses in the visual arts. Subsequently, Claire’s husband became a professor at Syracuse University, and Claire obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree, in 1977, from Syracuse University’s School of Art and Design.

While she was working towards her MFA degree, Claire lived with her family on a farm in the town of Cazenovia, near Syracuse. Claire scoured the barns and yards of her neighboring farmers for materials for her metal sculptures, materials that were donated to her by the farmers for her much-admired creations. Claire continued to use these materials in her works for decades.

Claire says that she loves finding things and hates to throw anything away. “The primary way I make work,” she wrote for a catalog for a show of her work, “is by putting things together. These things can be ‘found objects’ or made by me. They can be metal, wood, fabric, paper—whatever comes my way.” (The show was at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, in Cazenovia, New York, in 2003.)

"Exotic Kingdom"--sculptures included in a show
of Claire's work at the Everson Museum of Art,
Syracuse, NY, 1996.

Claire began by making large metal sculptures, and experimented with jewelry and collages while she was a Fellow at the Yaddo Art Colony, near Saratoga Springs, New York, using metal pieces retrieved from her foundry for jewelry. Claire has also worked and taught in Barcelona, where she started to scuba dive, and to paint the colorful Mediterranean fish in a series of stunning fish paintings. She used a railing she found in Barcelona for chair sculptures, and one of her chairs was included in an international art show in Madrid.

Her grounding in art, according to Claire, began with an aunt’s work as a designer-dressmaker, and her mother’s sewing. In an interview by Nancy Callahan for an art exhibition at the State University College in Oneonta, New York, in 1992, Claire noted that the work of her aunt and her mother in doing dresses for weddings and other occasions gave her a valuable background in color and texture, and clothes continued to interest her. As the smallest adult in her family, Claire always got hand-me-downs, which she loved. When these “vintage” clothes started to come apart, she made molds of them and cast them, doing a series of clothes in aluminum. These she describes as “sort of the ghosts of clothing.”

Claire is close to her sons and dotes on her two grandsons, with whom she recently celebrated her 77th birthday, but she is glad that she had her children before she became very active in her career as an artist and teacher. Raising children and running the house, says Claire, takes the same creative energy as making art, and she doesn’t know how a woman can manage to do all this at the same time. Claire notes the male artists she knows usually depend on a woman for support in domestic matters. Perhaps the best advice for an artist, man or woman, according to Claire, is to find somebody to give that support. Claire herself was not supported financially as she built up her career, because she and her husband had divorced. (They ended up as friends.) She had some difficult years, but she is able to support herself and enjoys “a great sense of freedom.”

Claire's dining room at her home,
which is an art gallery in itself.
The table is one of Claire's large
metal sculptures.

Claire’s daughter-in-law, Gillisand Haroian, wrote an article about her for the Summer 1993 issue of Ararat and lists many of the honors that Claire has won, including a First Prize in Sculpture at the Annual National Exhibition in New York and the Purchase Prize at the Minson-Williams-Proctor Institute of New York. She has had many solo shows of her work, in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Syracuse and elsewhere and has participated in group shows in many places, including Manhattan, Barcelona and Cognac, France. Her jewelry and furniture sculptures have sold in stores and galleries such as Henri Bendel in Manhattan, the Chilmark Gallery in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the Philadelphia Art Alliance shop and the Designer Showcase in Syracuse.

When Claire was a child she never thought that she could be an artist when she grew up. In her family, she recalls, artists were thought of as being very special people, and being an artist excused just about anything. “Oh well,” it would be said of someone who was, say, a drunk, “he’s a poet,” or musician, or whatever. Claire grew up thinking of artists as being in a very special category indeed, so that today it’s a bit difficult for her to speak of herself as an artist.

On the other hand, Claire feels that many people could be artists, if they had the time and space in their lives to make art. “I feel very lucky,” says Claire, “to be doing this.”