Figurative Bust Sculptures

Sculpture One, View One

The Successor of Medusa

Air dry clay, 0.05-micron pen, and two wood palettes. Windsor & Newton inks in the shades

nut brown, emerald, scarlet, canary yellow, orange, white, and black Indian ink.

4 inches x 4.5 inches

Sculpture One, View Two

Sculpture One, View Three

Sculpture Two, View One

The Fall of Medusa

Air dry clay, 0.05-micron pen, and two wood palettes. Windsor & Newton inks in the shades

nut brown, scarlet, emerald, white, and black Indian ink.

4 inches x 4.5 inches

Sculpture Two, View Two

Sculpture Two, View Three

Both Sculptures, View One

In-process, View One

In-process, View Two

In-process, View Three

Eige, "Sexism at work: how can we stop it?"

Many companies, in the US and the EU, have been at fault for not committing to employee inclusion or diversity policies. “94 % of EU citizens believe gender equality is a fundamental right.”

https://eige.europa.eu

The New York Times, “Women Keep Up Their Tradition of Wearing Suffragist White”

Women in the House wore white in solidarity against State of the Union Addresses. “Women stood out once again in a sea of dark suits at the State of the Union address on Thursday night, wearing suffragist white as a form of solidarity and protest… except for 2018, when some Democratic women wore black in support of the #MeToo movement, many women have worn white at State of the Union addresses since.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/us/politics/white-suits-women-state-of-union.html

Reflection One

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.

Reflection Two

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.