Following early
artistic training at the
Vogue School of Fashion and the renowned
Chicago Art Institute, young Isabel Scherer of
Davenport,
Iowa devoted two
formative summers to expanding her artistic
horizons under the
watchful eye of
Grant Wood,
America’s greatest
prairie artist. While improving her skills within Wood’s
Stone City Art Colony, Isabel also met
soon-to-be-
accomplished artist
John Bloom, whom she married in
1938.
While later
pursuing a
sculpting career in her
home studio, Isabel seized the
opportunity to combine her artistic talents with America’s newest
communication medium,
live television. As host of “
Make Believe,” Isabel designed
clay figures to
illustrate the
children’s stories she told. Isabel’s
insightful observations of
children, both
on the set and at home, became the driving
inspiration of her sculpting career.
Isabel’s
experimentation with the
reproduction of her clay sculptures led to the development of the unique
casting and
hand-finishing process still in use today. Encouraged by the ever-increasing
demand for her stylized designs, hand-finished to
resemble the
weathered bronze of
Victorian-era garden sculpture, Isabel moved her home studio into rented quarters in the
Village of East Davenport, a
facility still in use as one of the
Studio Showrooms of Isabel Bloom,
L.L.C.