Adaline Kent

Adaline Dutton Kent or Adaline Kent Howard, (August 7, 1900 – March 24, 1957) was an American sculptor from California. She created abstract sculptures with forms inspired by the natural landscape. Early life and education Kent was born on August 7, 1900 in Kentfield, California, one of seven children of women's rights activist Elizabeth Thacher Kent and U.S. congressman William Kent. Her grandfather, Albert Emmett Kent, had purchased an 800-acre farm in 1871, which later became the town of Kentfield. She began her education at Vassar College before returning to the Bay Area to study at the California School of Fine Arts. She studied in Paris with Antoine Bourdelle at the Grande Chaumiere. She married Robert Boardman Howard on August 5, 1930, after they worked together on the Pacific Stock Exchange building, a Miller and Pflueger architecture firm project. They had two daughters, Ellen (May 1931 – Oct 1987) and Galen (born April 1933). Work The first fifteen years of her career her art focused on the human body. She loved the fact that sculpting the human body offered anyone to have their own personal interpretation to the craft. According to Kent, there is no awkwardness to the human body and its representation is not subjective to anyone other than the creator. Kent also felt comfortable with taking ideas from the human form because our bodies are familiar and easy to shape into various artistic position. This foundation in the form of the human body led her to discover her true passion of creating works of art that dealt with the flow of nature.