Audrey Corwin Wright
Audrey Anis Corwin Wright (1923---1994) lived her life in Miami where her father, Albert Anis, an architect, created Art Deco hotels in Miami Beach and elsewhere [1]. Muriel Hirsch Pick, her mother, was a property and hotel owner as well as an important member and supporter of many health care institutions in Miami [2]. Wright received art education at the University of Alabama and the Art Institute of Chicago. Following her education she taught privately as well as being an instructor of stone sculpture at the University of Miami [3].
Wright was an explorer of sculpture in a wide variety of materials, including metals, alabaster, clay, stone, and plastic. Margaret Lefranc said she was an accomplished welder, and Wright felt that was important to have technical acumen in balance so that her sculpture could sit freely and securely and not be stuck against a wall [4].
Her work encompassed non-representational elegant and curvilinear forms in alabaster; she also produced pieces that were completely representational --- with a trick. Bags of sand inspired her to sculpt solid alabaster into their image. As Lefranc mentioned, “she had a marvelous sense of humor…” [5] These works seem to cleverly evoke that humor. Graphic art with actual plant fragments was another interest of her artistic pursuits. The 1915 bungalow that she occupied for decades was surrounded by plants and animals that she loved.
“All of my pieces are based on the mechanics and actual properties of what I work with”, Wright said [6]. Preferring to stay within her work, she did not crave travel, but she worked in that early magical time in Coconut Grove when it was friendly and laid back with neighborhood luminaries like Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and Margaret Lefranc [7].
Wright was part of a celebrated 30-year show comprising 35 artists, including Gene Massin, of the Old Coconut Grove Artists Group in the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Massin and Wright had a long association, and Massin included Wright in a show, titled, SIX IN FLORIDA in 1989 at COCA, the North Miami Center of Contemporary Art [8].
Wright’s oeuvre is noted for two large metal murals at the coral Resort and Country Club and the University of Miami, a two-story fountain at the old Americana Hotel, and many portrait busts [9].
“For those she loved," Lefranc noted, "she was enormously generous of her time.” [10]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Anis
[2] The Jewish Floridian, October 29, 1976
[3] Resume courtesy of Sandra McKenzie, President & CEO of the Margaret Lefranc Foundation
[4] Miami Herald, October 22, 1992
[5] Ibid.
[6] Miami News, February 12, 1986
[7] Ibid.
[8] North Miami Center of Contemporary Art, Winter 1988---89, Volume 12
[9] Miami Herald, October 22, 1992
[10] Ibid, she died of cancer at age 69