A 2002 Gold Medal Winner in Sculpture from the California Art Club Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, Angie Whitson took the prize for "Swan Song for a Satyr". The work was shaped in terra cotta and then cast in bronze.

She began her art career as a painter, first studying at the Pasadena Museum of Art, now called the Norton Simon Museum, and then studying at California State University, Northridge. She worked in acrylics in a non-objective style, exploring the effects of color and light. Then in the 1970s, she enrolled at the Art League of Los Angeles, a move that changed the course of her career.

There she studied with Hal Reid and then worked with him for six years, becoming his studio assistant and model. He suggested she try sculpting and connected her with Chuck Lund, whose foundry was in Simi Valley. She worked as his casting assistant and also taught a class in terra cotta sculpture at the Art League.

Meeting etcher Herb Fichter, a distinguished engraver and member of the California Art Club, Whitson formed a business with him in 1978 called UME Publishers. They sold prints of their work and even collaborated on the artwork for the Japanese One Hundred Yen note. During this period, Whitson continued sculpting and exhibited and won juried exhibition awards. She also created bronze portraits of television luminaries and other celebrities including Ernie Kovacs, Eddie Adams, and Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards.

Herb Fichter's death in 1995 was a terrible blow for Whitson, but her resulting intense focus on her sculpture grew out of the period of adjustment.

Source: "California Art Club Newsletter", October 2002, by Molly Siple.