ART

Ante Buljan is displaying medium-sized pieces in marble and bronze, although he is best known in San Mateo County for his 12-foot bronze and granite The Guardian which was commissioned by Redwood City for the entrance to its new police department complex. Born in Croatia but a Californian since the age of 9, he has family and cultural ties on both continents. In 1995, he completed a baptismal font for the Croatian Catholic Mission Assumption of Mary church in San Jose that he carved from a two-ton block of fossilized limestone quarried off the Dalmatian coast. Another limestone sculpture was commissioned for the entryway of the Croatian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

A graduate of UCLA (psychology), Buljan also studied at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda. For several years he maintained a working studio in the 1870 Art Center in Belmont. A native San Franciscan, Marion Finn moved to the Peninsula in 1951. She began her art career at College of San Mateo 30 years ago, and has exhibited her work throughout the Bay Area. She uses mallet and chisels (and lots of sandpaper) to create her sculpture in fine hardwoods in her studio at the 1870 Art Center.

The four sculptures presented by Marion Finn were all carved in black walnut wood. Two, Trinity and The Long and the Short of It, are five feet tall. She also works in exotic woods (ebony and rosewood). “Wood is a living matter that lives again through the creativity of the artist”, according to Finn. Her sculptural forms are based on both human and animal motifs, ranging from pure abstraction to representation.