Artist Series: Post #3 Beth Cavener Stichter

Beth Cavener Stichter

I'm Baaacccckkkkk!!!!!
Artist Series Post NUMERO TRES, for your viewing and reading pleasure.

I'm actually kind of shocked I hadn't thought of Beth for the first post. She has been a major inspiration to me as a sculptor since I began to study clay sculpture in College.
I was lucky enough to meet Beth at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia PA in 2005ish when my graduate class took a day trip together to check out the Gallery. She was so gracious and so informative. I believe she was a guest artist resident at the time we visited.

Let me tell you something about this woman's process. IT IS INTENSE. She sculpts smaller versions of her rather enormous sculptures and then pain-stakingly guts them and compresses them so that even her small sculptures are amazing. Her larger-then-life sculptures are literally hundreds of pounds of clay slammed together over steel frames . She literally smacks the crap out of the clay with a two-by-four to get it into place, and then again she guts the whole thing and compresses every inch of it.

I wish I had a quarter of her talent and patience.

Strange Attraction
Stoneware with
Taupe Porcelain Slip
18" h , 22" w, 28" l

Artist Statement:
There are primitive animal instincts lurking in our own depths, waiting for the chance to slide past a conscious moment. The sculptures I create focus on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal and human forms. On the surface, these figures are simply feral and domestic individuals suspended in a moment of tension. Beneath the surface they embody the impacts of aggression, territorial desires, isolation, and pack mentality.

Both human and animal interactions show patterns of intricate, subliminal gestures that betray intent and motivation. The things we leave unsaid are far more important than the words we speak out-loud to one another. I have learned to read meaning in the subtler signs; a look, the way one holds one's hands, the tightening of muscles in the shoulders, the incline of the head, the rhythm of a walk, and the slightest unconscious gestures. I rely on animal body language in my work as a metaphor for these underlying patterns, transforming the animal subjects into human psychological portraits.

I want to pry at those uncomfortable, awkward edges between animal and human. The figures are feral and uneasy, expressing frustration for the human tendency towards cruelty and lack of understanding. Entangled in their own internal and external struggles, the figures are engaged with the subjects of fear, apathy, violence and powerlessness.
Something conscious and knowing is captured in their gestures and expressions. An invitation and a rebuke.

Object Lesson: Apathy

Stoneware
black porcelain slip,
glass tank, water, steel
Tank:
30” l x 22” w x 30”h

"Humiliation by Design" in the rough solid state
during a demonstration at the Archie Bray Foundation workshop with Tip Toland

A Rush of Blood to the Head, in progress

Rush of Blood to the Head, finished

Yup....those are pretty big penis's....yup...I just wrote penis.....
Why do I feel dirty posting this all of a sudden? ...*shudder*...

Beth writes about her recent body of work below, and describes her concept and ideas behind the large penis sculpture...I MEAN, "Rush..." sculpture...sorry.

“On Tender Hooks”

Writing about the ideas and intent behind the recent body of work including “A Rush of Blood to the Head”

The first thing I like to make clear when talking about my work is that the images I create are visual questions that I am asking of myself, and by extension, all those who come in contact with them. They are questions, rather than statements of opinion, because I am constantly struggling to reevaluate my own assumptions about human behavior and motivation- my self as the primary subject of scrutiny. This ongoing internal investigation allows me to delve into subjects I find deeply uncomfortable and personal, using the sculptures I create as a means to speak of things I find impossible to put into words.

Contrary to the perception many people have initially of my work, I am not out to shock or confront the viewer with the images I create. Instead, I am taking material that is already uncomfortable and trying to recreate it with an element that keeps people engaged despite the disquieting nature of the subject. I take moments of stress and try to point out the humor of the situation; feelings of rejection and loneliness and transform them into universal feels that are shared; moments of suffering and transforming them into situations where we can see how unnecessary and avoidable they are. I really want to make these uncomfortable aspects to our humanity and make them somehow beautiful, poignant, sensitive and above all, something that I can overcome through understanding and empathy. I shyly reveal my vulnerabilities and deepest insecurities in the hopes that I will be understood and forgiven.

What really drives the work is the attempt to lure others into confronting these same issues. This is the main reason that I shifted from using the human form to the animal figure. In my experience, I found that most people empathized more readily with animals than humans. There is an assumed moral and emotional innocence that we associate with the animal image which allows me to delve into territory which we normally find too uncomfortable to dwell on. I want to create images that address some tough questions, while at the same time addressing why we find these questions uncomfortable.

Themes of Recent Work
The last element that I feel is important to the work I create is the fact that these sculptures- while remaining individual characters are essentially part of a group of characters that were created for a specific body of work. This past year and a half I begin a new series of work, based of the history of scientifically categorizing human behavior. I was most interested in a particular way of understanding/misunderstanding human psychology that was practiced by the Greeks, founded by Hippocrates. As the Wikipedia entry describes:

“Essentially, this theory held that the human body was filled with four basic substances, called four humors, which are in balance when a person is healthy. All diseases and disabilities resulted from an excess or deficit of one of these four humors. The four humors were identified as black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood…. When a patient was suffering from a surplus or imbalance of one fluid, then his or her personality and physical health would be affected.”

Simply stated, each of the four types could be characterized in the following way:
· Sanguine Too much blood Passionate, Bold, impulsive
· Melancholic Too much black bile Depressed, anxious, moody
· Choleric Too much yellow bile Irritable, hostile, bitter
· Phlegmatic Too much phlegm Passive, introverted, rational

I was intrigued with the idea that people could emotionally and physiologically evaluated based solely off of how much fluid they contained in their bodies. Looking into the idea a bit further, I discovered a work of fiction written by Rupert Thomson, Divided Kingdom, in which society has been divided into four separate quarters according to the inhabitants' dominant humor. The grouping of characters that I created for my exhibition, “On Tender Hooks” this past fall was an exploration of that idea- on the surface, treating the humors as a serious method of categorizing human behavior, while questioning the legitimacy of over-simplifying people in this way and more importantly, investigating the very human need to understand each other in this way. Our need to label, categorizes, and distinguish ourselves from one another through gender, race, religious affiliation, body image, sexuality, or politics is a reoccurring theme in my work.

“A Rush of Blood to the Head” in Context
I began the working on the cast of characters with the idea for the portrait of the Sanguine personality- those who are afflicted with an excess of blood and characterized by intense passion and impulsiveness. Following from my work on the exhibition, “A Modest Proposal,” in which I explored aspects of human sexuality, I still felt that I was struggling to understand and relate to certain aspects of gender identity. I remembered reading an account of an antiquated view of homosexuality as being described as ‘aberrant and unnatural behavior caused by a rush of blood to the head.’ The phrase ‘a rush of blood to the head’ was also used as a legal defense to describe ‘a crime of passion’ for which the person could not be held accountable. It made me think about the desire to ascribe anything other than ‘accepted normal behavior’ as a fault of one’s own irrational body…an excess of blood in the body. I find it curious that the same aversion does not necessarily apply to the idea of women sharing intimacy with one another- in fact had the two figures in ‘Rush’ been female, then the result might have had more similarity to a beer commercial than a controversial image. Is it because we associate the feminine with ideas of nurturing, affection, and intimacy, while the male image is traditional grounded in images of independence, power, and virility? I wanted to explore the more fundamental and conflicted views we have that lie beneath these social political issues, and many of the works in “On Tender Hooks” address multiple assumptions about gender identity.

"A Rush of Blood to the Head" is the centerpiece of the entire exhibition, because more than any of the other pieces, the sculpture of the two kissing goats deals with something that is profoundly human. The kiss is specifically a gesture of human intimacy. The passion and tenderness of the embrace is likely to provoke a sentimental response, despite the fact that is completely unnatural for two animals to display affection with their mouths in a kiss. When you are just looking at the upper half of the goats, you are dealing with issues of human intimacy and passion that are identifiable by almost anyone. But then we come back to that initial reaction - why does viewing the sculpture in its entirety so often change the viewer’s reaction? When you are viewing the sculpture as a whole, it addresses a complex and controversial social issue which everyone is familiar with. Out of all the forms of intimacy, this one seems to me to be the hardest one for most people to accept, regardless of what side they come down on personally or politically. My goal was to make this piece as alluring and passionate as possible, so that there’s always an element that calls to people to remain engaged despite any uncomfortable feelings with its sexuality.

The initial impulse for creating these sculptures is the struggle to overcome my own assumptions about the thoughts, motivations, and feelings contained beneath the surface of the people around me. I am often tangled in a mess of frustration with my own limited experiences, inhibitions, fears, and prejudices that create a barrier between understanding and communicating with the people around me - whether they be strangers or my closest acquaintances.
- Beth Cavener Stichter
March 2010

Husk

"Humiliation by Design"
Stoneware,
Steel, cast iron gears, rope
The handle to the right turns the cast iron gears,
slowly rotating the figure on the center shaft

Figure: 38 in. h x 58 in. l x 21 in. d

Mechanism: 82 in. h x 83in. l x 52 in. d

2009

 

A Second Kind of Loneliness
Stoneware, paper pinwheel, internal mechanical breathing device
Every 8 seconds, a breath is released from the goat's mouth, causing the
pinwheel to spin slowly

Impressed?

Well if you would like to see more and/or know when and where she will be teaching next then visit her website at http://www.followtheblackrabbit.com/index_main.htm

I would love nothing more then to go to her workshop in Italy. It's been a dream of mine for a long time to go back to Italy and now that I know she will be hosting a workshop there in Tuscany next summer, I want nothing more then to go. BUT, I went and bought a house this year, so that dream is now shot....I should have planned that one out better.