Deborah Bridges is a Northern California native residing in Grass Valley, CA. Deborah's art education began as an apprentice in a studio that specialized in monumental scale bronze sculpture . She established a career in bronze classical figuration, then developed a line of cement garden sculpture that is currently being carried in art galleries across the U.S. These days Deborah is creating thought provoking ceramic figurative sculpture, teaching advanced sculpture, and running a studio that includes two apprentices. Her work has won awards from the Off-Center International Ceramic Art Competition 2017 and 2019, Wild and Scenic Art Show in 2019 and 2022 and juried shows such as Utah Arts Festival and La Quinta Arts. The exploration of an idea in a piece is central to Deborah’s art. She works in a series until the idea is exhausted within the form. Her current body of work, “Persona”, began in 2018. When asked what is it that she is expressing in these serious faces with masks and puppet-like bodies? She says, "I love the incongruity of them. I love the complicated and mysterious humanity of them. My figures are grappling with the full range of human experience, the dark as well as the light. The face paint points to the masks we wear as we try to hold on to the stories of our apparent separate selfhood, our personas."