Edmund Kara (17 October 192525 May 2001) was an American fashion illustrator and designer, interior designer, and sculptor on the Big Sur coast of California. Biography Education and early career Kara was born in Roselle Park, New Jersey and descended from Eastern European immigrants. His interest in art began at an early age. He attended New Jersey's Arts High School. At the age of 18, Kara moved to New York City and started working in the display department of Macy's. He soon moved to fashion illustration for advertising agencies. He was introduced to Lena Horne, and was soon designing her performance wardrobe. Kara also designed for Peggy Lee, Sarah Churchill, Keely Smith, Miss Stella Brooks, and Mrs. Nat King Cole, Maria. Kara then designed for custom collections for Rosette Pennington and Jewel, among other custom houses in both New York and Los Angeles. He went on to create his own label. Kara also worked in Los Angeles in the 1950s and doing theatrical wardrobe and costume design for both Universal and Paramount Studios. He also worked doing freelance interior design. Later years and fine arts career Finding the business aspects of the fashion industry repetitive, stressful, and stifling, Kara yearned for a change of lifestyle that led him to take a bicycle trip in 1953 around the world for two years. Though he returned to Los Angeles, but he would soon move to Big Sur in 1962 to find his passion of sculpture and establish a simpler existence. It was in Big Sur that he became a wood sculptor creating a body of work ranging from masks and head figures to abstract pieces. His woodwork was fashioned from wood grown in Big Sur that was found or was given to him. He almost entirely used the reductive method. "I'm a worker. I belong to the working class. I love physical labor, that's why I chose wood," he told writer Rick Deragon in 1990. Kara focused solely on creating art for almost 40 years in the isolated setting of his coastal studio. Images of Kara in his studio can be seen in Kurt Edward Fishback's book of photographs entitled Art in Residence: West Coast Artists in their Spaces. Kara said to David J. Brown, "I thought, capitalism annihilates creativity because you start working for bucks, rather than just working to be an artist." Showings, commission and public collections Though Kara focused