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Waddell is a filmmaker based in Paris, who returned to Arizona several months ago as her father’s health was failing. “He has created more sculptures than Rodin,” says Amy Waddell. But those are just two of over 150 sculptures created during the artist’s career, which spanned from the 1930s until his death. There’s the sculpture of a young woman seated on a chair, which sits inside the gallery at Burton Barr Central Library, and one of a mother holding her son, which stands surrounded by foliage at Scottsdale Civic Center. “They’ve drawn so many artists to Arizona.” Ruth Waddell recalls John’s early watercolors filled with desert hues, but he’s best known to many for his human figures, which dot the metro Phoenix landscape. “He loved the vast Arizona sky and colors,” Amy Waddell says of her father. They were gathered at the Waddell Studio and Sculpture Garden in the Verde Valley, where Waddell created not only monumental sculptures but also paintings that showed his decades-long dance with the desert. on Wednesday, November 27, with his wife and fellow artist, Ruth Holland Waddell, and other family members by his side. For much of the 20th century, the American artist created figurative works and paintings that reflect his love for both the desert sky and the human form. Lifesize sculptures by John Henry Waddell seem to dance amid the urban desert outside Herberger Theater Center, where they resonate with new meaning now that the artist has died.
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