Marisol's Artistry.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle

A ONE-WOMAN SHOW at the Art Museum of the Americas, in Washington, D.C., features imposing sculpture--portraits in wood by Marisol Escobar. The show, which opened last October, runs through January 9, 2000.

Known in the art world as Marisol, the artist was born in Paris to Venezuelan parents, but has spent her career of more than four decades in New York. The sculptures in the current show, all of them created in the 1990s, portray a wide range of characters, from a diminutive Mrs. Tom Thumb with Baron Magri & Count Magri to a towering Native American figure, Rain in the Face, topped with a headdress with paddle-like wooden feathers.

Most of the portraits have cubelike bodies-solid blocks of richly grained wood-and faces sculpted, drawn, or painted by the artist. Marisol's subjects include both personal friends and famous personalities, such as the Belgian painter Rene Magritte, depicted wearing a sculpted bowler hat and carrying a real umbrella. In one installation, The Funeral, John F. Kennedy, Jr., as a saluting toddler looms...