Richard Byrne

Richard Byrne was born in San Antonio, Texas, and spent several years living and working in Israel on a kibutz before moving to Ein Hod Artist Village in 1978, where he interned at the Zaritsky Art Foundry.

Through his work at the Zaritsky foundry, Richard met and studied under Nathan Rappaport, world-renowned Holocaust Memorial sculptor. He later moved to New York to work with him at the Modern Art Foundry in Queens. Both Richard and Rappaport later worked together at the Tallix Foundry and maintained a close friendship for years.

From 1980 to 1986, Richard owned a landscape firm in Texas, which provided him with an aesthetic foundation for the work he is currently doing with landscape architects-fabricating distinctive, functional and structural elements for the garden.

In 1988, Richard went on to study at the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture in New Jersey, where he immersed himself in all aspects of fine art casting. During his tenure at the Atelier Institute, Richard was fortunate to
work on several important public sculptures, including the structure and fabrication of Lorado Taft's monumental sculpture "The Blind."

In 1989, Richard moved to Chicago where he co-founded Great Lakes Art Studio with his wife, Donna Zarbin-Byrne. He has created furniture and decorative objects and collaborated on a multitude of projects with architects, interior designers and artists.