The sculpture entitled The Successor of Medusa was inspired by the Greco-Roman myth of Medusa, and how many women from those myths were either portrayed as saintly or villainous. I intended to visually communicate how easily one can be replaced in a competitive world, and how in the Greco-Roman myth of Medusa, it was a challenge to take down a “dangerous woman”.
I wanted to focus on making this sculpture the “ideal woman” from a man’s perspective, compared to the Medusa figure from a woman’s perspective, because that is how she would be perceived by the opposite gender. I decided to include darker hair and a darker dress for sculpture one to communicate that she may not be the dream woman that the men of mythology have perceived her as and that she is more similar to the “monstrous” Medusa than they may realize. The work was not producing the results I wanted, so I decided to change the inks and color palettes used for the sculpture; the clay was giving me issues, but not as many as with sculpture two.
I want to keep exploring how to work around air dry clay’s faults–when it tends to be so fragile and brittle, and I want to learn more about what air dry clay allows an artist to work with, as I learned many of its limitations in this artistic process. This piece allowed me to explore how the ink interacted with a different material, which was the clay. The making of this work exposed new ideas such as very hands-on artwork with clay, and the complexities plus, limitations of the substance.
The sculpture entitled The Fall of Medusa was inspired by the mythos surrounding the Greco-Roman myth of Medusa, and how many portray her as the monster and attacker of this myth; I believe that this interpretation is false and that she was simply misunderstood. I intended to visually communicate how this misunderstanding, particularly in the myth, leads to Medusa’s untimely demise.
I wanted to focus on portraying Medusa as not just a Gorgon, but a woman, because many viewers of the myth will not view her as such. I decided to include small blood stains on the sculpture to remind the viewer that Medusa does meet her death by violent means. The work was not producing the results I wanted, so I decided to “run with it”. The sculpture’s head would not stay on, so I decided to instead make it a part of the piece and its narrative.
I want to keep exploring how to work around air dry clay’s faults–when it tends to be so fragile and brittle, and I want to learn more about what air dry clay allows an artist to work with, as I learned many of its limitations in this artistic process. This piece allowed me to explore how the ink interacts with a different material, which is the clay. The making of this work exposed new ideas such as very hands-on artwork with clay, and the complexities plus, limitations of the substance.
