font VII, 2021
soapstone, raw egg, white vinegar, stop loss trap, horse hair, binder, plaster, pigment, beeswax, epoxy clay, gauze, kombucha mothers, paper
6 x 15 x 9 in
15.2 x 38.1 x 22.9 cm
15.2 x 38.1 x 22.9 cm
This is part of a series of 'fonts,' or holy water basins, I began in 2016. Each 'font' features a piece of hand-carved soapstone with a hollow carved into it,...
This is part of a series of "fonts," or holy water basins, I began in 2016. Each "font" features a piece of hand-carved soapstone with a hollow carved into it, inside of which rests a raw egg that has had its shell eaten away by white vinegar. The egg is left as a slippery, translucent, squishy bulb; I am thinking here about porosity and vulnerability. How the nourishing liquid inside of the egg takes the place of the sacred water of the font, while the exterior of the egg plugs the gaping orifice of a fractured face in a moment of either silencing or feeding.
The work also references deleuze & guattari's concept of the body without organs, and the cosmic egg of various cultures' mythology. A body that both arises from chaos/primordial waters, but also moves in continual proximity to total annihilation
deleuze describes this as "a new dimension of the schizophrenic body, an organism without parts which operates entirely by insufflation, respiration, evaporation and fluid transmission (the superior body or body without organs of Antonin Artaud)." This body is also described as "howling", speaking a "language without articulation" that has more to do with the primal act of making sound than it does with communicating specific words
This sense of the body without organs--teetering at the edge of destruction by grief, and ego death--also informs my material and formal choices in the types of attachments i've been building on my sculptures using epoxy putties, beeswax, various types of plaster, and found materials or tools like the animal trap
The work also engages the double meaning of “fetish”: its sexual connotation as well as its antiquated meaning as an object believed to have spiritual powers, such as relics, amulets, and talisman. I am thinking here through notions of belief and yearning: feelings that exist beyond the articulable
The recent sculptures merge wood, plaster, bone, stone, and other materials to produce objects on the edge of recognition. Their components toggle between discipline, protection, violence, and tenderness. Each hybrid in some form, the sculptures evoke the monstrous, the Othered, and the cast out. Acts of mending and salvaging allude to physicalized balms for woundedness and devastation. Stemming from a pained place where language is rendered inadequate, they communicate a global loss that might be accessed only through erotic relation: of absence, the missing, and that which is unbounded.
The work also references deleuze & guattari's concept of the body without organs, and the cosmic egg of various cultures' mythology. A body that both arises from chaos/primordial waters, but also moves in continual proximity to total annihilation
deleuze describes this as "a new dimension of the schizophrenic body, an organism without parts which operates entirely by insufflation, respiration, evaporation and fluid transmission (the superior body or body without organs of Antonin Artaud)." This body is also described as "howling", speaking a "language without articulation" that has more to do with the primal act of making sound than it does with communicating specific words
This sense of the body without organs--teetering at the edge of destruction by grief, and ego death--also informs my material and formal choices in the types of attachments i've been building on my sculptures using epoxy putties, beeswax, various types of plaster, and found materials or tools like the animal trap
The work also engages the double meaning of “fetish”: its sexual connotation as well as its antiquated meaning as an object believed to have spiritual powers, such as relics, amulets, and talisman. I am thinking here through notions of belief and yearning: feelings that exist beyond the articulable
The recent sculptures merge wood, plaster, bone, stone, and other materials to produce objects on the edge of recognition. Their components toggle between discipline, protection, violence, and tenderness. Each hybrid in some form, the sculptures evoke the monstrous, the Othered, and the cast out. Acts of mending and salvaging allude to physicalized balms for woundedness and devastation. Stemming from a pained place where language is rendered inadequate, they communicate a global loss that might be accessed only through erotic relation: of absence, the missing, and that which is unbounded.
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