Notes
September 19, 2007
Almost six months have passed since my last entry. I can't even begin to make up that kind of ground, so I'll give a quick summary and then we'll start fresh.
Our last two months in Ireland were a whirlwind of visits from family and friends. We were so happy to share our adopted home with everyone who came to visit, and they in turn reminded us of all the reasons that we were excited to move back to America. We did manage to squeeze in a trip to Den Haag and Amsterdam (where I had the great pleasure of meeting Deirdre McLoughlin), as well as a hop over to Edinburgh. To cement our jet-setting reputation, we spent a few days in NYC to ease our re-entry back to the States.
We spent the summer working in Ann Arbor, eating as much Korean food as phsyically possible (the Dol Sot Bi Bim Bop at Seoul Corner is the best EVER), and trying to reassimilate to driving everywhere and shopping at any time of day we wanted. At the end of July, we packed everything up and moved to Morehead, Kentucky.
Lots of unpacking boxes later, we are almost settled in and I am headed back to the studio. In the middle of all this, I was accepted in to the International Ceramics Museum Emerging Artist Exhibition in Fuping, China. My work, along with that of 70 other artists from around the globe (including my Irish friends Elaine and Jane) will be on exhibit during a coinciding conference, and then become part of the permanent collection of the museum. You can check out the piece here.
March 28, 2007
Sometime ago I found a fantastic site with detailed (and large - they have 300 dpi downloads available!) images from Ernst Haeckel's Die Radiolarien. In the course of life, I completely forgot about the site, the images, and Haeckel in general. And then this weekend I was reminded of them after I conversation I had with a friend over pints.
But let me back up a bit. As some of you know, I went to the International Ceramic Research Centre in Skaelskor, Denmark for an artist's residency. Hopefully I will be able to post pictures of the work I did there soon. Also, I'd like to talk about this delightful artist I met, Sten Madsen - but I'll do that a bit later. First, let me tell you my latest small-world story.
This last Friday Bobby and I were walking up Dame Street on our way to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (yes, fellow Dubliners, we know that's what public transport is for. We like our feet.) Just as we were passing Dublin Castle, we stopped smack in the middle of the sidewalk face to face with our friends Elizabeth and Lado. From Ann Arbor. Whom we hadn't seen in close to a year and a half. Talk about weird and strange. Turns out they are living in Budapest, and were in Dublin visiting a friend. Told you, small world.
Cut to Monday night. We're sitting in the Stag's Head (off S. Great Georges, lovely pub) drinking pints with Elizabeth and Lado and some of their Irish friends (who were all grand lads, in Irish-speak). Lado tells me (in reference to my new body of work) that he is glad I have moved past my 'seed and nut making' stage. Thanks to the Guinness in my system, I was able to understand exactly what he meant, and thank him for the compliment. Which leads to me walking through Phoenix Park on a gorgeous WARM Dublin day (starting to think they didn't exist) and thinking about making 'seeds and nuts' and why I went through that phase, what is still important to me about it, and ultimately, back to Haeckel's Radiolarien. Convoluted, I know, but that's how my brain works.
And here's what I'm thinking: I had to make'seeds and nuts' in order to learn my particular visual vocabulary. I spent a good quantity of time there, and only after I built up a good 'dictionary' of forms was I ready to start pulling apart my seeds and opening my nuts, and making them into new and mysterious forms. It may be a small world, but it is far from boring!
March 27, 2007
I turn 33 today. It's very strange to be so far away from my family and friends on my birthday, but they all made special efforts to let me know I am loved and missed. Makes me all squishy inside!
The only thing I asked my husband for was another My Scene Fab Faces Doll (see previous entry). This time I got Kennedy, a fetching blond (although still dressed like a hooker). Kennedy's face is far more expressive, so I'm afraid that it is Nolee who will be going under the knife shortly. . .
February 23, 2007
This is the only thing I asked my husband for this Christmas. She is the My Scene Fab Faces Nolee Doll. And oh yes, she looks like a streetwalker.* Just what every 13-33 year old girl wants in a doll. What is so captivating and creepy about her is her face. She has a set of buttons on her back that are embossed with emoticons - neutral, skeptical, mad, surprised and what I think is supposed to be happy. My favorite is hands-down the mad/pouty face. Two emotions that no woman should ever combine so lightheartedly.
Her face is made of a flexible rubber, and there must be some set of levers and strings inside that push and pull on the skin. Truly, truly freaky. So not only is she a hooker, she's a hooker with a pre-set spectrum of emotion. I could (and have, but subsequently deleted) go on about the wrongness of this creation, but the artist in me thinks she is just too cool for words. I've grown attached to Nolee, but I think I'm going to go pick up one of her sisters and submit her to some investigative surgery. It can't be that hard to figure out, can it?
*Unlike most hard plastic female dolls, Nolee has netting panties imprinted on her skin - in skin tone! They are distinctly unsettling, and made both my husband and I give involuntary shudders of revulsion. Not to mention the fact that her vulva actually moves up into her body instead of being rounded (like a normal woman) out between her legs. Highly sexualized AND grossly anatomically incorrect. Just the thing for your precocious daughter. . .
February 20, 2007
The doll on the left I bought while in Hungary. She is only 4 inches tall, and most of her interior is given over to empty space. Gotta love that. The box on the right is an example of an inro box, along with the exploded view. I first ran in to these at the Chester Beatty Library here in Dublin. Now go and check out the Sugar Monsters.
Can you see where this is heading? I'm not sure when exactly, but don't worry, I'll take it there.
February 17, 2007
Whew, that was quite a break, eh? I was a bit busy, as you can see in my Fauna section. My time in Kecskemet at the International Ceramic Studio was fantastic and productive, so hopefully you'll forgive the prolonged absence.
One of the things I had ample time to contemplate while I worked in wilds of Hungary (okay, so Kecskemet is a regional center, but very few people spoke English, so it may as well have been the wilds) was how I felt about strength and mobility and physical limitations. They might seem like fairly random considerations, but after you look at the work I was building, hopefully you will see why I had those things on my mind.
In the midst of making all of these figures that had severely limited mobility, with unusable hands and feet, legs that couldn't support their weight, or no means of locomotion at all, I started to think about all the women whose strength and vitality I admired. When I sat down and strung them all together, it looked something like this:
Notice the lack of real women? Yeah, me too. But that's not the issue I want to focus on today. I'm exposing my extreme obsession with pop culture heroines here, so you'll have to indulge me. As a soon to be 33 year old woman, most of my peers (both male and female) find my involvement with these women warriors to be strange, and often react as if I shouldn't reveal this predilection in public. I would argue that one of the privileges of my age is that I am now old enough to like what I like without caring about what others think (seems elementary, but it's taken me a loooooong time to get here). So now everybody knows: I like super strong chic fighters from comic books, cartoons and science fiction.
The first woman in this picture sequence is a cartoon character of my childhood, She-ra. Our similarity in name led kids to call me "She-ra" instead of "Ki-ra" in elementary and junior high, something that aggravated my younger eager-to-please self, but thrills my older wanna-be-tough self. She was beautiful, had hips, and kicked some ass. My kind of woman! I haven't seen a She-ra cartoon in a long time, but she does seem to have a loyal following out there in netland.
She is followed by Gabrielle, Xena's sidekick. Gabrielle started off as a whiney bookworm, who turned into this hardbody wise bookworm, a transformation I have always coveted and desired. Much the same thing happens to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I've already admitted my attachment to Whedon-creations, so no surprises here) over the course of 7 seasons. She is saddled with more shit than any chick deserves, yet manages to stay strong in body and mind. I wish she'd have been a little more real-life shaped, but there's only so much you can ask for. I recently finished the final season of Buffy, and I don't know that there has ever been a more empowering and substantial examination of chic-power than the final episode. It should be required viewing for every tween age girl on the face of the planet.
Rounding out my pantheon of heroes are X-23, the genetically designed daughter of Wolverine and Starbuck (or Kara Thrace) from the new Battlestar Galactica. Talk about two women balancing great power and even greater demons. And they do it with such strength and grace. (Incidentally, I love that Katie Sackhoff, the actress that plays Starbuck has this rockingly sexy, REAL body). X-23 is still fairly young, story-wise, so we will have to see what kind of woman she turns into (if she's given a chance - that's the main problem with these fictional heroes - their stories can end at the behest of some corporate exec who has never actually gotten to know them). I've only watched up to the beginning of Season 3 of Battlestar, so Starbuck still has some growing up to do as well.
But she has the same quality that I admire in all of these women - they are very good at what they do, and that prowess carries just as many burdens as it does rewards. Because that is how the world works, I think. I'm not complaining - far from it. I think that young American women are often presented with the notion that if they work hard they can have whatever they want. But nobody ever talks about the consequences. The world is not black and white, good and bad, victory and defeat - it is an ever-shifting blend from one end of the spectrum and back on to itself.
§There is no perfect. And I think that's all I want to say about that for now.
January 10, 2007
I'm in the midst of getting ready for my residency at the International Ceramic Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary. In between working up sketches for new dolls and casting what feels like millions of resin feet, I came across Jessica Joslin via Metafilter.
I have always had a penchant for the gross and the delicate combined - Joslin hits it right on the nose. It can be tricky with this style of work to effectively suspend your viewer's disbelief. I think Marco up there could get up and walk right through the computer screen and onto my shoulder. Where he would probably start drilling in to my brain pan. . .but wouldn't it be cool if he did? (The crawling bit, not the drilling bit).
I'm working on how to elucidate my fascination with all things post-apocalyptic. Not quite there yet (although I finally got to watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer* thanks to a rockin' present from Santa), but I know that work like Jessica Joslin's fits in there somewhere.
*My husband Bobby told me yesterday that Joss Whedon is going to write a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season EIGHT as a comic book. Surely he wouldn't taunt me with such riches, so it must be true. . .
December 8, 2006
Architectural Study III, 2006
My first week in Ireland I attended an international ceramics festival put on by an Irish-Welsh joint initiative, Feile Clai. There were two shows put on as part of the festival, one of the presenter's work, and one of emerging Irish and Welsh ceramic artists. It was in the Emerging Artists show that I had the great fortune to run into the work (and eventually the person) of Elaine Riordan.*
Elaine's work is not at all in my wheelhouse - she makes buildings, for starters. With sharp edges and straight lines. Not exactly a visual vocabulary I'm acquainted with. Over the last 3 months I have had the opportunity to see a lot more of Elaine's work, and working process. Over pints of Guinness** we have talked about surfaces, insides, groupings, shapes, non-clay elements. . . other stuff, too, but we're talking about the work here.
Given all this interaction with both the work and the maker, it's not until recently that I figured out why I think these constructions are so captivating. They are soft, and intimate, and made with great deliberation and love - qualities that never manifest themselves in life-scale buildings.
Pieces like Worlds Apart (2006) testify to the intensity with which Elaine works, and also the range of experiences she draws on. These delicate skyscraper-pueblos are printed with images of India and New York. Elaine has travelled all over the world, and when she talks about those adventures, it is always with an eye to communicating the true experience of the place. She doesn't 'collect' experiences when she travels - she lives them, just as she doesn't 'decorate' these buildings with the transfers, but turns them into bricks and windows and steel girders. (Incidentally, this piece won Elaine a place in the Royal Dublin Society National Craft Competition and won her the Muriel Gahan Scholarship. Not bad.)
But Elaine's work is at its strongest when she uses her 'intuitive' vocabulary (as opposed to her 'pictured' one) as in Architectural Study 1 (2005). Look at how the light caresses the surface of the building on the far left. At how the delicate grids subtly emphasize the height of the buildings - it's almost sad, how tall these constructions want to be (the tallest is maybe 20 inches). Even the spaces in between the buildings speak of tenderness and secrets. And oddly, the work looks incredibly stable. I say oddly, because these are built from wafer thin sheets of paper porcelain. Just the other day, I watched Elaine smooth layer after layer of slip over a patterned plaster mold. It is such an intimate and meditative way of working - one that manifests itself powerfully in the finished object.
By moving our view over the top of the piece, we can see the conceptual influence of the working process. These buildings with no windows are hollow all the way down. Their seams are painfully visible from the inside, like a small puff of air could split them wide open. The ribbing that looks so strong from the outside becomes insubstantial and fragile when we see it from the interior. The steel wire buttresses have aged in the kiln, their fragility revealed. Their placement is so thoughtful that it feels like if we pulled one out, the whole piece would just softly disintegrate.
It's tempting to link Elaine's work to the disastrous events of September 11th. Certainly the subject matter encourages such an approach. There is a tangible connection between the Irish and America - not just in terms of our mutual immigrant history, but also in terms of a common foe (Sorry, UK readers) and being a hard-scrabble folk (once upon a time). So an Irish artist from County Kerry could sincerely be making work in response to that day. And she may well be.
But what I see when I look at these buildings has more to do with the Ireland of today than the New York of 5 years ago. This is a country in the grips of growing pains the likes of which I have never seen. There is new construction everywhere. (As I write this, I can feel the vibrations from the drills the workers are using downstairs. Complete apartment redo and upgrade). The buildings that are sprouting out of Dublin's sidewalks are glass and steel husks. Like cicadas leave behind. Just earlier this week, Elaine and I were driving past the docklands (a site of incredible growth) and commenting on how the pace at which these buildings are exploding is making Dublin look like any river city anywhere. Out of the 30 odd new buildings (built in the last 1-2 years) we saw in a 1/2 mile stretch (take a second to wrap your head around how much construction that is), only one payed any attention to what had been there before. One out of 30, made with any thought other than New-Fast-Modern-Shiny.
And so when I look at Elaine's work, built with such deliberation and intimacy, I see a response to the swiftly changing landscape that the artist inhabits. In the solid facades I see an attempt to lend age and history to a city losing its grip on itself. The kiln-softened contours evoke a nostalgia for all that the Celtic Tiger is leaving behind in it's ever faster sprint towards the future. She may not know it yet, but Elaine Riordan is a kind of oracle for what a city can lose in it's efforts to gain. Dubh Linn would do well to listen closely.
*Incidentally, Feile Clai is also where I met Jenny Maidment, but I didn't see her work until much later.
**I have been informed by someone in the know that I cannot call myself a "Guinness Fiend" until I can make it past 3 pints in one sitting. Happy to say, I'm working on it!
Elaine Riordan lives in Dublin, Ireland. She teaches at a university in Limerick, and is finishing the second year of her M.A. at the National College of Art & Design. Same deal as with Jenny-- If you would like to get in touch with Elaine , e-mail me at kiramonsters AT yahoo DOT com.
November 30, 2006
Angora Blend, 2001
Every once in a while you come across an artist whose work is so bursting with integrity and passion that you just get all giddy inside. Jennifer Maidment* is one of those artists. In the interests of full disclosure, Jenny is a friend of mine, but even if I had stumbled across her work purely by accident, my opinion would be the same.
About 5 years ago there was a burst of work (in the United States, anyway) where people were slipcasting soft-bodied objects like pillows and clothes. For at least some of the people working in this way, there seemed to be a lot of focus on the seemingly miraculous preservation of the soft folds of fabric in the hard material of the clay. I will freely admit that I was never a big fan of this type of object. I can admire the skill that it takes to execute a true trompe l'oiel work, but isn't the original object ultimately more interesting?
There is, however, an undeniable chemistry between ceramics and fibres. Hard and soft, smooth and textured - they seem to have a romance of contrasts. It wasn't until Jenny showed me her work that I saw this romance consummated in an original (oooooh, I hate using that word, but it's the best one for the case) way.
Jenny handbuilds all of her ceramic pieces, shaping their contours and details knowing all the time that the object will ultimately be invisible. Because Jenny covers her work using fabrics, hiding the pieces inside expertly tailored pillows of cloth. The craftsmanship is so superior that we never wonder how she pulls these skin-tight operations off, but instead concentrate on the valleys and bulges of her highly erotic sculptures.
And that's one of the things I love most about Jenny's work. Without being aggressive, or pretentious, or self-aware, it is sexy. Damn sexy. She put ceramics and fibres together and figured out how they can make beautiful music together.
In Pink: 2 Nodes (2001), the cotton candy pink faux snakeskin glides over the surfaces of the ceramic forms, highlighting the tension in their curves and hinting at secrets in puckers and crevices. The varied texture of the fabric allows light to skim over the surface, creating soft folds with no hardness but what they are keeping to themselves. Like I said, sexy.
In Taut Metal (2001) the contrast between fabric and ceramic has been heightened and brought into sharp relief. Like a live insect pinned down by an entomophile, the turgid form pushes up against the tight metallic fabric. The effect is to simultaneously give the form wings and restraints. Again, sexy.
Even in works like Pink Veiled (2001), where the fabric has been loosened around the object, that sense of erotic deferment pulls at our senses. Just imagine how sensuously that clothe would pull over the hidden form when you walk by. Like a silk skirt over newly shaven thighs. Yum.
Jenny works in such an intuitive and honest way that this work never goes over the edge into being lurid or exploitative. Instead these pieces occupy their own, separate space - one where we are pushed to acknowledge the romance between the fabric and clay, each medium acting in its most seminal form.
*Jennifer Maidment lives and works in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland. She granted permission for these images to be used here. If you would like to contact Jenny, please send me an e-mail at kiramonsters AT yahoo DOT com, and I will pass it on to her.
November 20, 2006 Part 2
If you have spent any time poking around the work on this site before you got to these notes, you've probably noticed that I haven't done a whole lot of figurative work before. There is a huge pile of reasons I could go into for that phenomenon, but another time, when I've had a few pints. (I almost hate to admit it, but living in Dublin is turning me into a bit of a Guinness fiend). For now, we'll step around that pile and take a look at what's on the other side.
We know faces. We don't think we do, but we do. If I asked you to sit down right now and sculpt a face, a lot of you would hem and haw, avoiding the process at all costs. But some of you might try it, and I think if you did you would be pleasantly surprised. Because we spend all our lives looking at faces, feeling them out, trying to guess what's behind them, analyzing them for beauty, or lack thereof. And so despite my previous avoidance of representational work, I found that I know how to do it. If I simply shut off the "i-cant" valve in my head (something we should all do a lot more often), it turns out that I can. And what's more, I like it.
True to my art school training, I've been doing 'research' for this current project. Thankfully I have learned that my 'research' needs to be lots of looking, and very little reading (at least of the non-fictional variety). In that spirit, I went to my local library and found an old book called Dolls of the World. I'll have to dig up a link, it was published in the 1960's and is no longer in print.
Because of it's publication date, the book was mercifully skimpy on modern dolls, and rich in dolls made of porcelain, wood, wax - organic, degradable materials (okay, so porcelain doesn't degrade, but it is non-toxic and can be broken up into lots and lots of little tiny particles). The faces on these dolls are completely captivating.
What I find most intriguing is how much the structure of the faces change from doll to doll. Not the eyes, noses and mouths so much as the overall framework. Especially considering that these are all 'white' (or 'western') dolls (it should be noted that the book I used wasn't exactly all that culturally inclusive), it would seem that the jawlines would adhere to some standard, but they don't appear to.
I also love how all of these dolls, even the Sasha doll on the far right (designed by Sasha Morgenthaler) have small, tight mouths. As if they are all holding something in, gritting their teeth, putting on a show. I don't remember ever seeing a doll who has a wide, open smile on her face. Except for Chucky, where the grin is creepy. But it still seems like some doll out there ought to be capable of a good belly laugh, don't you think?
November 20, 2006 Part 1
My, it's been a while. Apologies all 'round. I have been busy. In fact, I've been channeling the spirit of Dr. Frankenstein.
I started working at the Firestation Artists Studios in early November. Thanks to months of diligent drawing, I had a fairly good idea of where to start. I don't know that I have ever done this much drawing prior to executing a project, and it is definitely I habit I plan on adopting. Building complex forms out of a mushy substance is hard enough when you don't know where you're headed. Having the drawings as a launching pad has let me build with confidence and direction, as well as follow spontaneous inspirations.
I usually shy away from ever showing pictures of unfinished work, but I think these dolls have an alluring, (dare I say haunting) quality in their naked, unfired state. What these pictures show are the body parts for three dolls - working titles are "Walk Softly," "Tread Lightly" and "Slide Over Here." They are in various stages of production. I start off by building the rough forms fairly thickly, then as they dry I thin and refine the shapes. The content of this work is chaotic and nervous enough - it's important to me that the surfaces be tight and controlled, to act as containers for all that other stuff.
As a result, the working process is not efficient. I handle each body part many times. I have learned the contours of these dolls as well as as those of my own body. This intimate handling also allows me to make very subtle changes over the course of time. For instance, these preliminary heads started off with clay eyes that I had lightly sketched the iris and pupils into. Then I smoothed them over. Then I cut them out and made them separate. And finally I have decided to use real glass eyes made for dolls. They look alien with those dark voids in their faces, yet I am more aware of them 'watching' me than when they had complete clay eyes in their heads. . .
Posting pictures of sketches and work-in-progress makes me a wee bit ansty, so let me finish this entry off by paraphrasing Shepherd Book, of Firefly fame: Please don't steal my ideas or forms, for if you do, you will burn in the special hell, reserved for cheaters and thieves.
October 19, 2006
Despite the fact that I fancied myself a tomboy growing up (Jo was always my favorite character in Little Women), I loved dolls. I still do. The only doll I have with me in Dublin is X-23 (who is really more of a figurine than a doll), but I've been thinking an awful lot about the dolls that are waiting in our storage space back in Michigan.
When I was growing up, I knew that I had been a good girl every Christmas, because I always got a Madame Alexanderdoll. They came in dusty blue boxes printed with a pink and green rose vine pattern. Inside, the boxes were pale pink, as was the tissue that was wrapped over each doll and sealed with a glossy white sticker that had "Madame Alexander" printed on it in raised gold script.
I would rip the paper away (not having learned my adult pack-ratty ways) to reveal the glittering treasure sleeping inside the box. Madame Alexander dolls are all frozen in a pre-pubescent state, no matter what costumes they were. Sleeping Beauty (this is the version I have), that virginal vixen who laid in baited sleep for some comely prince to awaken her with a chaste kiss (no doubt to be followed by a good romp in the hay in the original version), has been stripped of her adulthood, dressed in a confection of yellow and gold, and encumbered with a sparkling crown (fastened under her chin with a pale yellow elastic) in the M.A. version. I loved her. She held a place of honor on my dresser, next to Snow White and a smaller Spanish Flamenco dancer like this one, that my dad brought home from a business trip.
The first thing I would do once I had my dolls in the privacy of my own room would be to completely undress them so that I could examine their plastic bodies. Every time, I would redress them with a faint sense of disappointment. I don't know what I was looking for, but I know I didn't find it. Part of the point of playing with dolls is the ritual of undressing/dressing, changing costumes, a beginning primer in changing baby clothes. But beyond that, maybe I was looking to see if the dolls had grown up yet or not. There is something sinister about an adult fairy tale character regrown as a child.
Which is the exact opposite (although no less sinister) of a doll that is made expressly for children, shaped as a grown woman, and marketed with vast quantities of exposed flesh. Thankfully the 'Kira' Barbie character did not come into production until I was a teenager (and not interested in dolls at all, thankyouverymuch). If she had come out earlier, my already tortured self image might have suffered horrendously. There were not many children named Kira when I was growing up, and I had a tendency to fiercely project myself onto anyone or thing that shared my name. That included the gelfling from the Dark Crystal, the lead Muse in Xanadu, and could have included Hawaiian Kira Barbie Doll.
I can see little bits and pieces of my childhood dolls showing up in my current body of work (pun very much intended). Madame Alexander dolls do the adorable chubby elbow like noone else. The delicate wrists and fingers of my Flamenco doll take on a ghastly quality when attached to a grossly overlong arm. And the improbable balancing act of the Barbie chest-waist-hip ratio helps me give my dolls a grisly sense of movement.
October 14, 2006
Rebekah Bogard is one of my favorite ceramic artists. She is not afraid of making humourous work, and everything she does has an undercurrent of repulsion.
That pairing of beautiful/grotesque has been very much on my mind lately. Partly because I am living in an architecturally fascinating city with ever changing skies and dog poop every three feet (Aah, Dublin). And also partly because I am (as ever) in the throes of recognizing these qualities in my physical person. In the morning I might look at myself in the mirror and be pleasantly surprised by how pretty I look. When I check back in that afternoon (surprisingly, I am not a mirror-checking kind of gal), I often find myself taken aback at the bags that have crept under my eyes, the sallow and greasy tone of my skin, how unflattering my hair is long. In all truth, I doubt much has changed, but the difference in my chemical/emotional/mental state works great changes in what my mind sees.
Bogard's work does the same thing - we are drawn in by the luscious, smooth surfaces, then all of a sudden discover that we are intensely examining one animal licking the anus of another. Even in the more abstracted, mystery-creature works, Bogard plays on our desire to be drawn in by jewel-tones and pearl-shaped objects. As a general rule, human beings are suckers for the polished stone. With Bogard's stones, though, we may be developing a mild case of lust for what may ultimately be a bacterium that will give us diarrhea. Fun!
I am hoping to tap into this same bottomless well of the beautiful/grotesque with my upcoming body of work. You can read about my sugar ghosts under the Artist Statement tag. Hopefully I'll have some posted here very soon. I am renting a space at the Fire Station in November, but I hope to have some preliminary forms built before then (and yes, it will be my first foray into air-drying clay. Try to keep the skin shivers down to a dull roar). In the meantime, enjoy Bogard's work - anything so beautiful has to be good for you!