Native Texan Ben Woitena received a BFA in sculpture from The University of Texas at Austin and an MFA from University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has lived in Houston since 1971 and, for 27 years, was head of sculpture at Houston Museum School of Art—now Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston—teaching figurative sculpture, life drawing, bronze casting, metal fabrication, and wood- and stone-carving. His large outdoor sculptures have been exhibited extensively around the country and are in the permanent collections of many museums and municipalities, including Amarillo Museum of Art; City of Texas City; Civic Center Grounds, Abilene; El Paso Museum of Art; “Kerouac Commemorative,” Eastern Canal Park, Lowell, Massachusetts; Memorial Park, Houston; Museum of the Southeast, Beaumont; Old Jail Art Center, Albany; San Antonio Museum of Art; Terminal “E,” George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tyler Museum of Art; and Vassar Museum, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Exhibitions of his works have been held at Arts Council of Midland; Artspace111, Fort Worth; El Paso Museum of Art; Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston; Meadows Gallery, University of Texas at Tyler; Salmon Sculpture Garden, Sunken Garden Park, San Angelo; Site Gallery, The Silos at Sawyer Yards, for Sculpture Month Houston; The Arts Center Texas Gallery, College Station, for Texas Sculpture Group; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Woitena’s c. 2005 figurative sculpture “Mandatory Dogs,” made of painted steel and depicting a mother dog and her pup, was previously exhibited at Navy Pier Walk, Chicago, Illinois; a solo exhibition, Ben Woitena: A Retrospective 1963—2008, UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum, Austin; and Tyler Museum of Art.