medium /// sculpture




katherine duclos

Yep, I love everything about this project, titled “Low Supply”, by US born / Vancouver based artist Katherine Duclos. There are so many things – from emotions to politics to opinions – that come up when the topic of how women should feed their babies comes up. Well, I think Katherine is using this latest series {featuring cement sculptures and ink, acrylic, gouache paintings on Yupo} to explore this very personal subject in such a beautiful way. Here is her description of how it started, and where it’s going is fantastic:

“This project began with breastfeeding my now 11mo old, though in retrospect, the emotions and experiences driving this work began with my first child, who is now 4. This body of work is about breastfeeding, pumping, the trappings and accoutrement of sustaining a life with your body, and the emotional weight we carry as mothers, vessels, food source. For a long time I’ve made very different work that wasn’t particularly personal to me but this body of work is my soul laid bare, all of my anxieties as a mom, all the feelings of inadequacy as I feed my daughter with a low milk supply.

But my experience and emotions are not enough to sustain this work because I had a hunch the emotional weight of this experience was carried by many, many moms. So, I reached out in my online mom’s groups, my neighborhood groups, my friends’ groups, and I asked them to contribute. I asked for pumps, bottles, pump parts, nipples, expired frozen breastmilk, anything to do with feeding a baby. And the response has been overwhelming and positive. In a little over a month I’ve collected from moms as far as New York and as close as my neighborhood. I come home to bags of pumping supplies on my porch, left by moms I don’t know, who heard about my project. And I took those materials and started making work with them and about them. This project is just beginning. Please get in touch if you’d like to participate.

{found via Pennylane Shen}





debra baxter

Killing me! She’s killing me with these little beauties every damn day! Let me explain… American artist Debra Baxter {who I’ve written about before, both here and here} jumped in on a hashtag that I started a little over a week ago when it became apparent that we all need to do our part by STAYING HOME. Enter, #30DayArtQuarantine … there are now almost 6000 artsy posts under this hashtag, including these stunners that keep popping up on Debra’s Instagram feed! This is what she wrote when she kicked things off with that yellow ‘n pink treasure above:

“I have decided to take on the #30dayartchallenge that is @thejealouscurator ‘s idea because I’ll likely be at home hiding from Coronavirus that long. So why not have some fun!? I’m going to make a bunch of small wacky assemblages like I did with #100daysofsculpture in 2014. Here is Day 1. If you decide to do this too use the tag #30dayartquarantine

Sooooo good … oh man, I wonder what she’s gonna make tomorrow!? ps. Anyone is welcome to use this hashtag… let’s see what you’re keeping yourself busy with during this absolutely bizarre time.

 





melissa meier

Gasp! This is the stunning work of Brazilian-born, US based artist Melissa Meier. All of these wearable sculptures {!?} are from her series, titled “Skins”. Here is the description from her site:

In her current series “SKINS”, Meier has created sculptural clothing hybridsutilizing natural materials such as leaves, stones, fur, eggshells, wheat, rice, crystals, scales, sticks, feathers, pinecones and shells.

Inspired by Brazilian Carnival and Native American skin-walkers, her wearable constructions blend female empowerment with a self-created mythology, developed around the idea of ancient cultures of female warriors, exemplifying strength, beauty and unity of life lived in harmony with the elements. Her warrior women are breathtakingly sensual, while radiating a searing combination of purity and power.

Meier states, “At first I was inspired by the legends of indigenous people and how they used the skins of animals to transform into them, creating a bridge between the human and animal worlds. But as my work matured, I became equally interested in the future of fashion as an extreme form of kinetic sculpture.”

The costumes are developed into moveable, wearable sculptures that are brought to Life as performance art works, serve as independent sculptures and in their final documented form as archival fine art photographs.

This is where the work creates a bridge to the present and allows us to connect with and find ourselves reflected in her images of hidden, treasured cultures, heroines and spirit guides, imagined and real.

Beautiful. {Also, I want the crystal headpiece.}





sébastien gaudette

We all love paper, yes? Well how about giant paper – filled with creases, wrinkles and rips – that isn’t paper at all. These sculptures {mixed media on sculpted aluminum!} are the work of Montreal based artist Sébastien Gaudette. Here are his words about this series:

“The ‘Crumpled Papers’ series  painstakingly  represents crumpled sheets of paper. My work mainly comes down to the representation of paper, in its simplest form. Obviously I do not consider paper as a two-dimensional surface, but rather as a material that can be molded and whose spatial possibilities must be explored.”

Yes, they must! Love.





jessie weitzel le grand

Yep, I love absolutely everything about this colorful, bizarre, craziness! This is the totally weird work of Portland based artist {and 2nd grade teacher!} Jessie Weitzel Le Grand. The majority of the images above are from a 2019 series titled “Bloom Tomb”. Here is Jessie’s poetic description of this installation:

A thought, like an ambient smell.
It wafts in like a fart.

Hot trash. Musky shoes. It’s meant to be ignored. But this time, maybe—TURN NOW!

Finally see the metal FLY.
Where would you go? A place like no other.

It’s either pitch black or a miracle.
A town of no rules, no pain.

You have arrived.

LOVE! And the final piece above, titled “Drowsy Droop”, is part of Jessie’s show that is currently at Stephanie Chefas Projects in Portland until March 21, 2020… GO.

{Photos of Bloom Tomb by John Whitten; Photo of Drowsy Droop by Mario Gallucci}




amy gross

Oh. My. Word. This is the bizarre, beautiful and bedazzled work of American artist Amy Gross. I don’t even know where to start… the mushrooms, that hidden bird, the eyeballs!? I’m gonna pass this one over to Amy:

“My hand-embroidered and beaded fiber sculptures are my attempt to merge together the natural world and my own inner life. Their symbiosis suggests not only what can be seen, but also what cannot: the early alterations of time, the first suggestions of disintegration. I’ve always been attracted and frightened by things that are on the edge of spoiling, or straining to support an excess of growth. My elements seem to cluster, tangle, cling and multiply. They surpass some of the constrictions that my mind insists upon: my need to control excess, to categorize and label and keep things safe. They adapt to the environment they are placed into, like much of Florida life, and become hybrids in their desire to survive and thrive. And yet, paradoxically, their existence cannot help but be an exercise in human control – they are completely unnatural. I do not collaborate with the nature that fascinates me, the myriad visible and invisible interactions that lie at the heart of every insect, bacteria, tree and spore. I collaborate with manufacturing. I use no found objects, nothing that was ever alive. All are constructed with craft store yarns and beads and wire and paper and fabric transfers made from altered scans and manipulated photographs. They’re still and silent proxies, fictions frozen in the midst of their suggested transformation. My organisms will not die. The natural world will alter, regardless of any attempts to prolong or preserve. I know that my making these objects will not slow or stop the clock, perhaps they only clutter the environment with my very human need to turn thoughts into objects. Stubbornly, I still need to hold things still, insist upon asserting my will, to make up things that tell a story of change, things that capture rushing ideas in a life that races by.”

Loooooooove.





erica green

Oooh, don’t you want to touch alllllll of these pieces? This is the textile/fiber installation work of Colorado based artist Erica Green. I have to share her description for the first installation shown above, titled The Embers {2019}, because it’s almost as poetic as the work itself:

“When creating an installation, I begin with the architecture of the space. What struck me about the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Colorado Springs was the reflective glass doors and the ink black tile floor that ring the center chandelier space. I quickly sensed how these features could hold “The Embers.” The mended white fibers cascade from the ceiling and surround the thick, dark strips of felt that have stacked up on the tile floor. If you look closely, I believe you can see the fibers glow as they reflect off the surrounding surfaces. In some sense, they are both falling and floating.”

{found via Pennylane Shen’s Instagram; Photographs by : 1st installation by Stellar Propeller Studio  / 2nd installation by Draper White}





adam parker smith

I wonder if resin, steel, fiberglass, and urethane floats? I’m going with, ‘no’. These light but not light at all sculptures are the work of Brooklyn based artist Adam Parker Smith… and I LOVE THEM ALL! I want to touch one. But I won’t. Happy Friday.

{Found via The Hole NYC. These photographs are from his show there last fall.}





jessica calderwood

Well… I’m in love. This is the work of Indiana based artist Jessica Calderwood. Slip-cast vitreous china, steel, polymer clay, wool felt, sterling silver, plastic, milk paint and that’s only the list for ONE of the pieces up there! Here are Jessica’s words about her current sculptural work:

“My most recent series uses devices, such as drapery and stylized botanicals, to block out, cover, and hide parts of the human form.  These hybrid forms become a negation, a censoring or denial of what lies beneath. These anthropomorphic beings are at once, powerful and powerless, beautiful and absurd, inflated, and amputated.

I am interested in using traditional craft media, both for their creative properties, as well as their historical references to ‘marginal craft forms’, including enamel, porcelain, felted wool, and polymer clay. Throughout this exploration, I have been working in a miniature scale, as well as large-scale figurative.” 

{found via Momentum Gallery, Asheville}





hassan sharif

I don’t know how I didn’t know about Dubai based artist Hassan Sharif until now. His work of transforming everyday objects into colorful piles and mobiles makes my heart race. Sadly, while researching him, I discovered that he passed away, at only 65 years old, in 2016 after a long battle with cancer. Here are a few words from his website:

“I’m not trying to make magic of some kind that would impress an audience as to how the work is created. There are no secrets. The philosophical or psychological question here is how, as an artist, I give myself the authority to make art.” – Hassan Sharif

Recognized as a pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practice in the Middle East, Sharif’s artworks surpass the limits of discipline or singular approach, encompassing performance, installation, drawing, painting, and assemblage. Beginning in the late 1970s, he worked as a cultural producer and facilitator, moving between roles as artist, educator, critic, activist, and mentor to contemporary artists in the U.A.E.

‘I give myself the authority to make art‘. Yes. In 2018 there was a retrospective of his work shown at the Sharjah Art Foundation, titled Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist. Click on the title of the show to read more about that show, his work, and his life.