Johanna Schwaiger started to learn sculpting in Austria at the age of 15, when she enrolled the HTL technical school for professional crafts and arts of the sculpture department in Hallein. She learned wood carving stone carving and clay modelling.

After graduating, Johanna studied Art History for four years at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg with an emphasis on baroque sculpture. During her studies as an Art Historian Johanna took onto several commissions for figurative sculpture for private use and memorials for public spaces, such as town squares, graveyards, portraits and a café house in Chicago.

At the age of 26, Johanna decided to deepen her understanding of the human form and went to Florence Italy for three years to study classical sculpture at the Florence Academy of Art. During that time, she studied anatomy at the Russian academy in Florence Italy. After she finished her studies, Johanna was invited to the Fine Art Center in New York Sag Harbor, where she taught portrait and figurative sculpting for one year.

After that year at 2013 she returned to Austria where she started to show her work at the Galerie Schloss Wiespach in Salzburg and became part of a group of sculptors that show frequently figurative sculptures at the Sculpture Center “Kunstinsel”. Later that year Johanna was invited to be one of the forty worldwide selected sculptors who created the biggest Mahatma Gandhi Memorial in Mumbai India. Each of them sculpted two lie size figures that represented the Dandi Marchers of 1938. Since 2014 Johanna is working as an instructor at the sculpture school HTBLA in Salzburg where she teaches figurative sculpture and nude drawing.She also takes onto commissions and holds a permanent studio space at the Galerie Schlos Wiespach.

We will be providing all materials required for this class at the price of $5/lb of clay, and $40 for the sculpture base and armature. You may purchase these materials at our studio on the first day of class or bring your own materials. Sculpting tools will be made available for students to borrow during class.

Sales are non-refundable, but in some cases we can switch a student’s enrollment in a class that has not yet started to another class of equal or lesser value. Art Mentors reserves the right to cancel, limit enrollment, substitute instructors or models, reschedule or modify a class with notice to enrolled students. If a class is canceled, enrolled students will be given a refund. If an instructor is unable to finish a class term, a refund will be given to students at a pro-rated amount.