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Elaine Grove
Elaine Grove (1943-present), is an American sculptor and actress. She is the widow of abstract painter, Dan Christensen, Dan Christensen (1942-2007), who is best known for works related to Lyrical Abstraction, Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism.

Early Life and Education
Grove was born in Oklahoma City in 1943. Initially she was a philosophy major in college, but she switched to Art with a minor in Drama, and eventually earned her B.A./B.F.A. from the University of Dallas in 1965.

Before being a sculptor, Grove has worked as a commercial artist as well as a model, actress, and set designer. Grove also taught at Parsons School of Design (The New School for Social Research), NYC for a year between 1999 and 2000.

Her Work and Inspiration
Grove has previously been trained as a painter and has produced painting series. However, her artistic voice started to change, and she began to focus mainly on welded steel sculpture, under the heavy influence of Julio Gonzales, Picasso, David Smith and Anthony. Grove works within the “classic constructivist tradition” and her concerns lie with “drawing in space” and “infusing an animating spirit or animus into the pieces she produces”. Her works have appeared in magazines, books, and winning notable awards.

Grove's inspiration for sculpture came one day through a yard sale find. She saw an old iron rest, resembling a skeleton head. She further worked on this object and became extremely enthusiastic. Since then, it has become Grove's practice to incorporate “found objects” into her work; but she would also like to remind her viewers that her intention is for them “to lose the sense of original purpose of the object, and to focus rather on its form in relation to the overall sculpture”. Grove's style of sculpture, however, slowly evolved from “more lighthearted, humourous” to “more formalist, more serious, concerned with form”. Her work of art has gradually geared towards “silhouette-oriented”, which is a form arising from “juxtaposition of shapes rather than a concept or idea”.

Critics from her recent exhibitions
Grove's style of sculpture is regarded as both “assemblage” and “as fluid drawings in space”. Critics commented that her working process is “organic, summoning a poetic interaction between solid and void in found and fabricated idioms that emerge from within her studio practice”. Critics also commented on the compositional elements of her artwork, claiming that they are situated “between geometric and lyrical abstraction”, where “each of the component parts seems fluent in its own identity yet completely assimilated into the whole.”

It was not surprising to see that Grove's work meshed with the work of her husband, Dan Christensen, who was “incredibly supportive of her work”. The couple had had tandem shows, which attracted dealers' attention. In more of her recent works, critics claimed that Grove bridged the gap between her art and Dan Christensen's, her late husband's work in which she incorporated “the paint splattered blocks into her sculptural motifs”. In 2014, Grove used steel cord to link two lung-shaped wooden supports and a steel circle together. The result, according to critics, was “a tender composition...[which] personifies longing, presence and materiality”.