her artistic yearnings in her spare time, studying painting and sculpting at adult education courses. On weekends, she holed up in her Union Square studio, where she painted, worked clay models for bronze figures and chiseled smooth bold shapes from massive slabs of marble.

Some of her techniques she had learned from her classes at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research and New York University. Other methods she had picked up from master marble carvers that she had studied in Pietrasanta, Italy. "I was dedicated," Pinsker says. "I don't know what drove me."

One day, she decided to take a chance. Dressed in a sweatshirt and worn pants to conceal her high-fashion background, Pinsker shopped her portfolio up and down Madison Avenue. At the end of the second week, she went into the Bodley Gallery on upper Madison Avenue in New York City. The gallery owner, excited by her work, wanted to hold a one-woman showing. The exhibition in 1981 was so successful that the gallery owner decided to have a second opening the following week.

Pinsker's "Gordian Knot"

A year later, Pinsker had made up her mind to sell her business and begin sculpting full-time. "I don't want to die an efficient business machine," she told her husband. "I want to die an artist."

Pinsker in Vegas

Now, more than a decade later, Pinsker is being honored with a Las Vegas exhibition, a major lifetime retrospective, "I was thrilled ... It's a dream," she says of the invitation, which James Mann, curator of the Las Vegas Art Museum, extended to her last July. "I didn't think Las Vegas would have such a prestigious museum and when I saw the building I just couldn't get over it."

The exhibition, which opened last month and runs through January 10, features sculptures from the six

series that have dominated Pinsker's career. There are abstract/figurative pieces from her early days; bulbous shapes representing the evolution of man; solid geometric configurations inspired by the mythological tale of the "Gordian Knot;" and more recent models designed for public spaces, to name a few.

"I went through a whole period where I did biblical things, such as 'Isaiah,' " Pinsker says, referring to a black marble piece which will be acquired by the UCLA Medical Center when the show ends.

"And then there's the spiritual, metaphysical stuff in a series called "Other Realities," because every person has a different reality."

All the piece s are either bronze, aluminum, or Pinsker's favorite medium, marble. With her bold, semi-abstract shapes, Pinsker hopes to communicate a sense of meaning. "I want to communicate. Maybe it's the beauty of a line, maybe it's the pose of a body that says 'I'm suffering,' and the person looking at it thinks 'I feel that way too' ... I think most people get something out of my work."