PAULA SMITH, ceramics - HerStory

Connections to the "Gender" Concept

The idea for the “Sweet Sixteen” series came to me in 1999, my daughter had a “My Size Barbie” it was a gift from Santa in 1993. We had moved the doll up to the attic, but the whole idea was germinating in my head for years. My daughter had known that I was not a fan of Barbie dolls, the whole-body image thing, those dolls go against my grain. I am a feminist. So, she asked Santa for the doll, not me. My life and art involve around my family, so a lot of my inspiration comes from home. Anyway, back to the “My size Barbie” concept, I guess I saw it standing in the attic and thought I can make a series based on just the torso of this doll. So, I took the doll, after getting permission from my daughter, to the band saw and cut the head, arms and legs off the torso and made a mold of just the torso.

In ceramics we look at things as vessels, including the human body. I wanted these to “contain” objects like a reliquary of sorts. Sacred everyday objects, that come with their own definitions but by being placed in these torsos the meanings get changed or heighten. So, my original idea was to do 16 torsos, all having pink doll-like satin glazed exteriors, but making small niches that held objects that have references to being a girl, (gender identity). I had a show coming up and half of the clay torsos came out of a glaze kiln with the glaze defect called shivering. Having a deadline for my show, I had to get the pieces done. I ended up having to sand blast the glaze off the pieces, and that is how this series started to have individual surface treatments which made the work SO much better. So now I use glazes, sugar, rice, dirt, paint, whatever I think works for the piece.

The series is called “Sweet Sixteen” as a ceremonial rite of passage, a "girl" coming of age. The torsos female forms, almost a cookie cut out if you will. It is the surface treatment and the contained objects that individualize these pieces. Girls are not cookie cut outs they are all individuals. The first installation had 16 torsos. Now I show them in different groups and numbers, I have worked on this series for 17 years and I have made at least 100 different forms. Each sculpture has a different meaning and is a response to the object that is placed in the sacred container.

I love to collect things, now I am always looking for objects that I can place in these torsos. I found this little round mirror and thought about how we look at ourselves, our reflections in mirrors, by you the viewer looking at the piece with the mirror you are becoming part of the piece. The dirt can be interpreted as dust to dust, we are part of the earth.

The large match stick, I love things that are weird proportions, it struck me as such a funny object, but I bought it with the intension of putting it in a torso and “smoking” the torso like potters do with pots. Often each piece has many levels of meaning. I like the idea of the phrase; I got burnt by that deal. “You make me burn inside.”

For me as an artist the idea of gender identity is one that needs to be explored visually and conceptually. I feel these pieces make us think about labels and exterior vs. interior realities. 

GIORDANO ANGELETTI, photographs - Imaginary Views

The photographs that comprise Imaginary Views started with images of dollhouse miniatures (doors, stairs, and windows) set against Southern vernacular architecture. Using toy-like reproductions to inhabit unexpected environments allows the viewer’s imagination to take hold. Visualizing a world reduced to a scale one twelfth the size of our everyday reality, where a landing on a staircase may becomes a tree-lined avenue or a leaf may be the same scale as a park bench. These images refer to ideas of place, belonging, refuge, escape, and fantasy. The spaces imagined through these images are reverie; Fantasies of places that never were, tinged with nostalgia and wistfulness for what never was or could be—illusions that seek to conflate reality and hope to become real or surreal. Since the inception of the project, these images have grown to include diorama elements such as classical ruins and have escaped the confines of the safe space of the “home.” The more recent images are against and within nature and may be combined with famous historic views of Italy. These “classical remains” become a wink and a nod to Western culture’s classical, Greco-Roman roots. Playing off of more recent architecture, these images show how the use of classical architectural elements still lend authority and dignity to so many institutional structures.

JAMES KEUL, paintings - Between Will and What Will Be

In this series, which I have been developing and expanding over the past ten years, is an exploration of humankind’s relationship with nature, the way in which we are prepared to deal with our environment as it relates to human-caused climate change.

One piece, titled “Fish in Troubled Waters”, reflects on difficulties faced by people living on islands who, while often not big contributors to the problem, are often the first to be affected by a rise in sea levels as a result of a warming planet. This was inspired in part by nine months I spent living in Western Samoa as a youth.

Also in this series are drawings, paintings, and monotypes, which now number in the dozens, that draw a direct correlation between burning fossil fuels and natural disasters of all kinds, including volcanic ash clouds, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and even not-so-natural ones like an atomic mushroom cloud.

I am currently working on paintings and prints which bring more optimism to this series by offering hope through a representation of technological innovations that are being developed around the world to help alleviate our dependence on fossil fuels. This new direction will hopefully include working in conjunction with scientists in a number of renewable energy fields to share their ideas, which they often don’t have the time or predisposition to do themselves, in a way that will be more easily understood by a non-scientifically-inclined community.