Miriam, known as “Mimi” at 55, became a sculptor. She started sculpting and creating small and monumental pieces using stone, metal, marble, steel, aluminum, and a free spirit. Miriam says she conceives of the shapes to cultivate a visceral reaction in the viewer, not to capture the likeness of something. “Abstract pieces are much more emotional than pieces that delineate somebody or something,” Nelson explains. “I want a piece to lift somebody and give them a feeling of elation, delight, humor, or whatever.”
Miriam had always wanted to sculpt, and when the Museum School at the Museum of Art in Coral Gables offered a class in stone sculptures in January of 1982, she signed up. Within a few years, she exhibited in galleries in and around Miami. She has produced small and large sculptures in homes on the Hudson River and at the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, NY. She also paints. Just as she helped her clients as a psychotherapist find inner strength and beauty in themselves, over the last fifty years, Nelson has successfully extracted elegant and expressive forms from nature’s raw stone and metals and used her paint brushes and oils.
