All the craftsmen on Broadway then were plaster casts and old-fashioned this and that. “I was in the right place at the right time,” Curry says of the shift that would eventually change his life. But then theater practitioners started calling me.” “It’s the first time I’d ever been called puppetry and I hated it. “The great critic and writer Frank Rich for the New York Times saw one of my pieces and called them puppetry,” Curry says. Gallery shows for his paintings and sculptures started to gain attention, such as the angel he made that moved its wings, or the sculptures of famous philosophers’ heads that he floated down the Hudson River to the sea. So my first pieces were sculptures that I performed with.

“There was a lot of experimental art, and I fell in love with kind of street performance. “Things were happening there,” Curry says.

Curry was shocked when he learned she’d not only sent his work to colleges without telling him, but that a Portland art college had granted him a scholarship, too.Īrt college, after a few bumps adapting to that world, led to bigger dreams, and in the early ’80s he moved to New York City. I knew that I wanted to draw and sculpt, and that’s what I did.”Īt Grants Pass High School, Curry’s wrestling coach mentored him in the sport while the coach’s art teacher wife encouraged his creativity. But for me, I knew I was an artist before I even knew there was such a thing as an artist. “They didn’t actually condone a lot of books and media,” he says. Michael Curry Design is based in Scappoose, Oregon, about 20 miles outside of Portland, but Curry grew up in a Baptist religious community in Southern Oregon that eschewed most secular arts and culture. We caught up with him in Las Vegas where “Awakening,” his most recent project, opened recently at the Wynn Las Vegas, a city a long way from the Oregonian artist’s roots. Given the confluence of Curry-created characters in town – Simba, Timon, Pumbaa in Hollywood, Sven and Olaf in the OC – it made sense to talk to the man whose vision and company have created not just for these shows but for productions from the Olympics to Super Bowl halftime shows.

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