Alan H. Hamwi was born, raised and currently resides in Columbus, Ohio. He attended Antioch University where he majored in sculpture. His art education continued at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; the Aegean School of Fine Arts in Paros, Greece; Wright State University; Columbus College of Art and Design; and The Ohio State University.

Mr. Hamwi spent 12 years as a professional firefighter/paramedic for the City of Huber Heights and the City of Columbus Fire Department. Concurrently he maintained his career as an artist, exhibiting his work, managing, curating and co-owning the Mile Zero Gallery. In 1996, he retired as a paramedic and dedicated himself to full time production in bronze, clay and welded steel.

Human figure and exotic animal sculptures in both maquette and monumental scale are among his most recent works. Several of these pieces are at the Columbus Zoo, including his wart hog family, a manatee mother and calf, a hammerhead shark, and two gorillas. Mr. Hamwi also creates fountains and nonrepresentational work. Some of his recent pieces include a life-sized orangutan, an abstract figurative piece for the public library in New Albany, Ohio, and life-size leaping lion for a local school.

Alan Hamwi has participated in group shows around the country, including the Loveland Sculpture Invitational Show and Sale in Loveland, Colorado and the Danada Sculpture and Art Show in Chicago and the Sculpture Internationale in Atlanta, Georgia. His work is shown in several galleries and is often used by landscape and interior designers. He produces many commissioned pieces, working in collaboration with the patron, such as the piece presented to Jimmy Carter by the Windstar Foundation in Aspen, Colorado.

Until recently, the studio maintained its own foundry where Mr. Hamwi and his crew cast and finished his pieces, as well as work of other sculptors from around the country. Though they no longer pour their own metal, all mold making, metal work and patination is still completed at his studio. This assures that the attention to detail and quality is maintained on each individual piece fulfilling Mr. Hamwi’s credo of  “touching each piece from the inside throughout.”