Feeling the way in the dark to the curve of your face,
seeing with gentle fingers the rounds and hollows of your form…
Maybe you’ve been wondering lately, “Hey, why am I on this planet?”
Lemme tell ya. You’re here for the human interaction. Not because this is
your choice, or your reason for being (which is an entirely other thing).
Reason doesn’t even get a foot in the door yet. You’re here for the human
interaction because that’s your soul’s situation, the intractable pack-animal
fact about being here. Earth for our species is Human Relating 101. It’s a
very hands-on course.
… I find my own body again in the dark land of touch,
our first sense, and why feeling means emotion…
This is where Roxanne Swentzell gets started. Her clay people are her diary,
a history of her personal feelings, lessons in emotion in motion.
One of the best and oldest things a skilled sculptor can do is present a sense
of figurative presence, the feeling of truly “being.” Swentzell makes this
practice her fine art with generous infusion of wit, grace, and heart. While
her pieces are technical marvels, it is her sense of the human, and human
interaction, that ultimately blows you away.
…setting sail on a sea of smiles, the crinklesparkle stars of your eyes; this is how
I recognize you in the half-light of dawn when the heat has cooled…
Some of her people and masks explode in the kiln. Besides the excellent
Tower Gallery retrospective in Pojoaque, Swentzell was also a participant in
Relations: Indigenous Dialogue (one of the best exhibitions Santa Fe’s seen
in years) at the I.A.I.A. Museum. One of her contributions
toward this collaborative venture is one of these “sacred accidents.” The
term is Salvador Dalí’s but Swentzell’s surrealism is a much more subtle,
indigenous surrealism, rather than the Euro export. She also reminds me of
another (much under-sung) Spanish surrealist, Remedios Varos. They both
have a strong sense of signature style in the old-school way where
their work just seems to be exactly what they’re here on the planet to do, like
their individual styles are organic extensions of their bodies, like we all have
some kinda unique figurative style built into our DNA and our imaginations,
and Swentzell’s really gone all out in unearthing hers.
…from soft clay we come and to clay return, can this high-fired hardness we now hold last?
Jon Carver
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
Roxanne Swentzell: Retrospective,
Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery,
78 Cities of Gold Road, Santa Fe, NM 87506
All images in this web site are copyright © 2003 Towa-artists.com, Phillip Karshis. All artwork featured at this web site is copyright of the respective artists.
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