Goulet was an American sculptor, painter, poet, and educator renowned for her direct carving of stone and wood. Her art often explored themes of womanhood, family, and cultural identity, reflecting a deep reverence for the human experience.
Born Lorrain Helen Goulet on August 17, 1925, in Riverdale, New York, she began her artistic education at the age of seven, studying under Aimee Voorhees at the Inwood Pottery School. After moving to Los Angeles in her teens, she apprenticed with ceramicist Jean Rose in 1940. In 1943, she enrolled at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she studied under influential artists Josef and Anni Albers. There, she met fellow sculptor José de Creeft, whom she married the following year. The couple had one daughter, Donna Maria de Creeft.
Goulet held her first solo exhibition in 1948 at the Clay Club Sculpture Center in New York and went on to exhibit widely, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the 1965 New York World's Fair. In 1998, the National Museum of Women in the Arts recognized her career with a retrospective titled Fifty Years of Making Sculpture.
Her work is held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the National Academy of Design. She also completed numerous public commissions, including sculptures for the Bronx Public Library, Bronx Municipal Hospital, and the 48th Precinct Police and Fire Station Headquarters. A notable international work includes her bust of King Juan Carlos I of Spain, displayed in the Royal Palace in Madrid.
Throughout her career, Goulet was also a dedicated teacher. She taught sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art's People's Center in 1957, at the New School from 1961 to 1975, and at the Art Students League of New York from 1981 until 2004. Between 1964 and 1968, she introduced young audiences to sculpture techniques on the CBS children's television program Around the Corner.
In addition to her visual art, Goulet was a prolific writer of philosophical essays and poetry. She continued to create and teach in her Chelsea, New York studio until her passing on December 17, 2021, at the age of 96.
As a direct carver, Goulet would take her material as-is and begin to work without making any preparatory studies or maquettes. In Arcadia, the artist was able to uncover a loving couple, embracing, within this antique piece of marble. Goulet’s process required an extensive contemplation of the raw material, including its details such as the veins in the stone, as each unique feature – which would impact the finished work.
She is a sculptor who was perhaps over-shadowed by her husband Jose de Creeft and has not found her place of recognition in a field of carving that few women have attempted. A bit unsung in terms of ascending to higher levels of value although her biography speaks of industriousness, a serious career and lifelong devotion.