Sculptural Coffee Table & New Exhibition
I have an obsession with scale.
In an interview recently I was asked “why?” The obsession has to do with how scale can change perspective, and change our experience of reality. My first encounters with artwork that surpassed and subsumed my visual field were at the Des Moines Art Center. Climbing inside Andy Goldsworthy’s “Three Carins” and being enveloped by stack stone and a soft concave interior transported me. My view was totally obstructed and sound changed inside the form, I could turn around and look out, seeing the center Carin, that the others seem to have been pressed from. It was powerful, important and transformational. I could interact with artwork, touch it, and be immersed in it. I had been to other museums but it was also, look don’t touch. So the invitation to engage with the work and the material left a permanent impression and desire.
Hence, all my artwork looks so inviting to be touched and I encourage it. I recently touched a Henry Moore sculpture, I had resisted everywhere else, but there were no ropes and it was outdoors. I didn’t think, I just placed my hand upon it. It was three times my height, while I was tucked inside its curves the world faded away and I could feel the intention, the purpose to craft something so large, so permanent emanating from it. From him, so long ago.
The Bodies at Rest Coffee table is part of that scale, from hand held to mid sized and now something I cannot move on my own. I am stepping towards that desire to immerse. Clay is a difficult medium to immerse, even at the scale of the sculptural coffee table, so I changed mediums in August.
I have made a fabric experiential sculpture called “Re-Wombing - Artwork that Amplifies Healing.” The idea has germinated for a year, and finally the time came when I would set aside clay and create this immersive artwork. The invitation is to climb inside, to lay down on the soft quilted floor of the womb, listen to a guided meditation and re-womb or re-birth yourself anew. This project will travel, I built it to do so. The experience is radical, sacred, and transformational.
This is Slow Art, not Pop Art. It asks that we slow down and show up to see what can occur when artwork is intentionally made for the collective good and individual healing. This work sits outside anything I have ever done, and is powerful. I resisted entering and experiencing it for myself, until two weeks ago when finally I allowed myself to slow down, to climb inside to receive the healing available and sobbed until a wound in me began to heal. It works, it’s unlike anything I have experienced and I think it is exactly what we need. You are invited to visit and see for yourself. Every weekend there are healers offering workshops in conjunction with the artwork, an even greater opportunity to gain the most benefit from the artwork.
Would love to have you,
Paige
