Tony Angell

• Name — Tony Angell • Born — 1940 • Birthplace — Los Angeles, California • Field — bird illustration, sculpture • Awards — V&A Illustration Awards, 2006 • Elected — * American Ornithologists Union, member • National Sculpture Society, fellow • Explorers Club, fellow

Angell was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1940. His father was a private eye, and his mother a painter and teacher. Angell grew up in the San Fernando Valley. As a child, he explored the Los Angeles River to hunt and fish, as well as the local beaches to surf and skin dive. This early exposure to nature instilled in him a life-long respect for the outdoors and native animals. He went to Seattle in 1959 on an athletics scholarship and obtained a BA in Speech Communications and a MA degree from the University of Washington. Angell taught high school and junior college communication courses before assuming the position of State Supervisor in the Office of Environmental Education for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction of Washington state. He remained in this position for over thirty years. He was active in the Nature Conservancy, with time as chairman and as a member of the board of its Washington chapter. He received the national organization's highest award, the Golden Oak Leaf, for his work in establishing the Skagit River Bald Eagle Natural Area. He was recognized as a Champion of Puget Sound by the Puget Sound Keeper's Alliance in 2014. His outreach with both his writing and artwork resulted in his election into the Hall of Fame of the Department of Communications at the University of Washington.

Angell makes sculptures in bronze and stone and has shown them regularly for some forty years. He has worked in chlorite, granite, marble, sandstone, serpentine, slate and soapstone. Among his many public commissions are Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, the Seattle Aquarium, the City of Redmond, WA, the Mount Baker Ski Area, Sleeping Lady in Leavenworth, WA and the public libraries of Bainbridge and Lopez Island. His work is part of the Harborview Medical Center and the public collection of the Seattle Business Center. His sculptural work is included in the collections of the Museum of Northwest Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Frye Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Gilcrease Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Cornell University has his paintings in their collections, as does the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. Awards for his artwork include the Master Artist Medal from the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Gallery of Wausau, Wisconsin, and a first prize award in illustration from the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2006. His sculpture Stretching Kestrel received the Chilmark Award from the National Sculpture Society, an organization of which he is an elected Fellow. In 2016, the Museum of Northwest Art awarded a Northwest Luminaries award in Angell's name. The award is named in honor of those who have left a lasting impact on the Pacific Northwest region (including Patti Warashina and art historian Bill Holm). The award is then given to artists of promise, as chosen by a distinguished nominating panel and jury. Angell acknowledges a number of influences on his work: the bird illustrators Don Eckelberry and Morris Graves, the carvings of the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, and a Japanese Edo-period screen carved with crows in the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

• Artist website: www.tonyangell.net • "Tony Angell Artist," film produced by Fidget.tv and underwritten by the Seattle Arts Commission, 2010