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The sculptures emerge from the making, from the initial process of joining pieces of wood anticipating the evolution of forms in significant relationship, which becomes the focus for exploration. I prefer not to plan but to discover surprises. The titles come later and are suggestive. The drawings follow the hand in the same way. What is not planned cannot be predicted.

Philip John Evett - December 22, 2003

Philip John Evett: The Aura of the Past/Future
February 5–April 18, 2004

Philip John Evett
Philip John Evett was born in Swanscombe, Kent, England in 1923. He received a full scholarship to the Cambridge College of Art in Cambridge, England, which he attended from 1938 to 1941. Following graduation, he entered the Royal Air Force and was in active service until 1945. After the war, Evett studied sculpture at the Belfast College of Art in Belfast, Ireland, from 1946 to 1948. He worked for the ecclesiastical restoration firm of Rattee and Kett, Ltd., repairing cathedrals and churches and "inscriptional letter cutting" on University College Chapel War Memorials from 1947 until 1952.

Evett's teaching career began at the Cambridge College of Art in 1949, where he was engaged part-time until 1954. He then immigrated to the United States in 1954, and taught at the San Antonio Art Institute from 1958 to 1962. In 1960 the artist began a long teaching career at Trinity University in San Antonio, from which he retired as Professor Emeritus in 1988.

Philip John Evett's work has been featured in over seventeen solo exhibitions, beginning with the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin in 1956. Other one-person shows have been presented over the years at the Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio, the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico, and at the Centennial Museum in Corpus Christi, among others. The artist's sculptures have been featured in over forty-five group shows, including exhibitions organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, the Witte Memorial Museum, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock and the Laguna Gloria Museum.

His works are included in several important public collections, including the McNay Art Museum, the Montclair Museum of Art in New Jersey, the Roswell Museum, the Witte Museum, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Oklahoma, Norman.

The artist has received numerous awards and honors, including the First Sculpture Award in Dublin, Ireland in 1947 and the San Antonio Artist of the Year Award (San Antonio Art League) in 1962. He served on the City of San Antonio Fine Arts Commission from 1969-1973, receiving a citation for Outstanding Service to the Community.

Currently, Philip John Evett lives and works in Blanco, Texas with his wife Joanne.