Sculpture
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Wounded Child
2020
4” x12” x 4”
Porcelain
The Wounded Child
For years I had a postcard from the Rodin Museum in Paris on my piano. It was a photo of a sculpture by Rodin called The Danaid. Based on a Greek myth, the figurative sculpture is of a young woman who has collapsed. She was one of the 100 daughters of a king, all of whom the gods forced to pay a great price for the sins of their father.
Her job was to fill a broken vessel with water. She has collapsed and, exhausted, embraces a pot full of holes. Her vulnerability that resonated with me. For all the years I looked at it, I never saw the broken pot. I looked at it every day because I felt what she was feeling by her body language. I never knew the myth until I researched the image to make the sculpture.
Like so much of my early life, hers was a task that could never be completed but which had to be performed.
After 60 years of trying to pay for my father’s sins, in my sculpture, the wounded child arches over the pot full of holes. In my version of the myth, she breaks the pot in half and turns the broken vessel into a shield. She grows up, stops trying to pay for her father’s sins and goes on to fight her own battles, protected by the shard of her previous suffering. She gets on with her own life. She survives and thrives.
The Victim
The Victim is on her knees. When I first made the sculpture, she was bound by a rope. It appeaed to restrain her but was simply wrapped around her, with one loose end. Once I understood her belief was what victimized her, I took the rope away.
I did three clay maquettes. I started small. She was subservient. As I got to know her, I worked more freely, she grew and I eliminated the rope. She was still a victim and full of sorrow - but she was large enough to take care of herself.
There was a time when I was a victim – of my fears, of my family trauma, of the myth that my life had to be a certain way. I believed that my story had been written and my job was to live it. Then I woke up and realized my job was to change it.
The rope of my past still surrounded me but the power to change was in my hands. What held me back was all in my mind.
I realized that I could rise up and release myself. I saw that the rope of family trauma could be repurposed and become a way to set the boundaries I needed to have room to grow and change. I began to stake out a pasture full of sweet grass in order to feed my growing life and give me the strength to go through whatever I thought could stop me.
I am ready to make the next figure of The Victim. I think I’m going need a bigger bag of clay.
The Victim
2021
9” x 8” x 4”
Porcelain
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Dilettante
2021
12” x 10” x 10”
Porcelain
The Dilettante
The Dilettante appears to be distracted. But that’s not quite it. The Dilettante is the original hyphenate. She is the doer of this and that. Not this or that. She is the ultimate appreciator. The taster with an appetite that cannot be satiated.
She looks up. She looks down. She looks back. She looks forth. She tries this and that and that and this. She wants it all and, as long as she’s at it, she wants it all at once, starting with that one over there. Her vision is panoramic. In the time it takes to blink, the background becomes the fore ground. She’s on a perpetual visit at the optometrist. There are so many choices. What is better, this or that? Or this? Or that? How about now? Her perspective on what is possible is 20/20.
When I made these figures in Porcelain I joined them at the hip and then let each one have her head, have her way, have the last word and have it all. Her enthusiasm is effortless, essential and endless. The Dilettante just wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Dilettante knows that she can be perceived as flitting from flower to flower. But that’s just the buzz on the street. She doesn’t hear it and if she did, she wouldn’t care.
Because the Dilettante is a dynamo. She is pure energy. From the outside, she looks like she cannot be satisfied. From the inside, when she sees what is possible, she gives herself permission to go for it. Again. And again. And again. And again.
The Healer
The Healer is broken. That is what makes her holy.
As the late great Leonard Cohen sang, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” By taking on the pain of life, the Healer embodies a skill greater than understanding or a gift greater than empathy. Within her emptied self, she holds a sacred space for what is in pieces, for what cannot be soothed. For what must be wailed. For all that cannot be comforted. And within that space, she heals.
When I imagined this piece, it was as a solid shape. I made it as a solid shape and marked it up. What do the marks mean? Is it a code? A language? A recipe for a balm? Maybe. After all, I live in a hamlet called Balmville. Are they bits of a formula I knew in another life? I have no clue. Does it matter? I don’t need to know. I just need to make them. Once I decided it was done and then put it in the kiln, it was whole. When I took it out, it was in pieces. Only the hands were intact.
I took the pieces that remained and leaned them into one another. There were not enough to close them up. I left them open. It is a threshold. A launch pad. There are walls to rail against and room in which to wail. Where everything can be told and nothing need silenced.
Above this space are the hands that close wounds and catch tears. Within this space is an answered prayer with room to echo and repeat. It is where the light gets in.
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The Healer
2022
12” x 8” x 8”
Porcelain
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The Artist
2022
8” x 6” x 6”
Porcelain
The Artist
The Artist is emerging. From the pieces she is creating. From the pieces of herself.
She makes then from the words she comes across in diaries that wait patiently, sealed in boxes in the basement and moved from coast to coast, from this life to that. Never opened but always there. From the dreams that wake her in the night and cling to the rim of coffee cup when she sits on the edge of her stool in the studio and tries to remember what stole her sleep. She drinks them in and spits out shapes and shadows and signs them when it is time to stop. She walks the dog and buys groceries eats and sleeps and starts again.
The Artist is emerging from the parts she can’t see.
Until she chooses the color, mixes it, dumps it and decides again. Until she tears the last sheet of the good paper and makes marks on the jagged edge. Until she sharpens mark makers and breathes in their dust. Until she swallows the light as she stands on the porch outside her studio and smacks the pieces of the wood she saved because she could see that they were once trees in the grain. Until they give in and tell her how to grow roots and reach for the sky.
The Artist is making something that she has never seen, that she has always seen. That has never been. That has always been. She is in it and of it. She stands by it and works through it.
Until she starts again. Until she is emerging.
The Mother
The Mother is on her knees. She holds an infant in her lap. She holds space for what is next.
The Mother is always ready to expand. To be filled and grow. To be certain and scared. To waddle and to wait. To push and plead. She is built to hold and feed. She waits to wipe up and wipe off. She gathers in everything damp and wanting. She knows how to be leaned on and fed on and slept on and peed on. She is full of rooms she has never slept in but must always keep clean. She always has a pair of dry socks when the way home is through puddles. She never asks what in the world were you thinking when everything she watched you climb collapses. She simply says, “Here.”
The Mother is always ready to become empty. To be filled and ripped open. Clung to and then pushed off. Wired to wait up until the lights of the car that no one should be driving finally appear and blind her, she saves the good part and makes room. She waits for you to walk and knows you will walk away.
The Mother holds the space. She has room for what you thought would happen. For what you need to happen. For what would never happen. She holds the empty and the endless. Her edges are stitched together with rosaries and the names of God. Her dried-up womb is covered with aprons she made those nights she stayed awake and waited for your fever to go down, while you dreamed of the life you would have when you grew up and left.
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The Mother
2022
10” x 8” x 8"
Porcelain
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Queen Mother
2022
18” x 8” x 8”
Red Clay
The Queen Mother
The Queen Mother is both a ruler and a vessel.
She is a queen and heavy is the head that wears the crown, so much so that it sinks into her bodice. Her skirts are covered with signs and symbols. Her word is law. She knows what she knows and she wants you to know it too. To obey. To kowtow. To bear witness. To bend the knee.
She has fishes for eyes, sees right through you. Knows what you want before you do.
She is a mother and expects to be needed and left, wanted and pushed back on. She was full of you and happy for it. She contains you and then holds space for what you need for as long as you need it.
This sculpture is based on a drawing my daughter did around age 8. It sat on the bookcase of my writing room for years. I looked at it every day. I never knew it was me. I added the signs and symbols. I do not know what they mean. I wish I had fish for eyes. That way, I could see beneath the ocean and know what makes the waves roll and reach. What makes the tides rise and fall.
I hope my daughter knows that having her is the single greatest gift of my life.