artist lecture #2: adelaide paul

a proud horse with no bones in her legs to hold her up

"30 days" ; a 432 urns numbered, with corresponding photos of the dogs each represents



as with james hyde, i knew nothing of adelaide paul's work before attending her lecture, aside from seeing the handbill showing a sculpted figure of a greyhound with leather sewn on like skin. it caught my eye instantly, promising to be atleast somewhat more interesting than the last lecture. the title of a series of hers contains "animal souls" .....
there is something about animals used in artwork (when done right) that creates a mood of quiet mystery; its as if the animals could talk but chooses not to, or humans choose not to listen, yet the artist has discovered some secret that only the animal knows.

i was intrigued all the way through adelaide's talk, from her beginnings in what one might refer to more as "craft" in ceramics, to the later more skillful forms, figures, and figurines, that took on an air of more conceptualized pieces.

the work which stood out to me as one of the most charged was called "30 days"; over 400 small clean white urns, each numbered and displayed on long shelves. in one gallery they were displayed against "hopital green" walls, another against a more calming lavender. also in the room were a few photo albums of 432 dogs (one for each urn) who had been "destroyed" in a months time. adelaide preferred this word as opposed to "euthenized" because the latter refers to animals who were put down due to suffering; these animals were healthy yet simply overpopulating the shelters in the town where adelaide lived.
adelaide dealt with ideals of interactions between humans anmd animals, and even gave many of her later figurines some humanly forms.
two greyhounds were "anthropomorphisized" ; one was given female human-like breasts , the other human-like male genitalia.
some figures have eyes that are sewn shut, others are given real animal antlers.
she most recently has been working with veternarian students and professors of anatomy to gain the most accurate knowledge of bodily forms, and noted how really similar so many creatures are underneath their skin.
i found her and her work to be oddly beautiful, her animal obsession paralleling the creepiness of a mortician working with corpses.... she did say that she had a puppy fetus in a jar at her studio.
later i thought of sally mann and her greyhound, the dog bones she dug up and photographed in "what remains".
even closer to home, i thought of shanna merola's work, (that which is rarely seen by many in the photo dept) which incorporates skeletal remains of small animals, next to pretty pieces of fabric and ripped out pages of old encylclopedias.......
it all inspires me to start a series of images of two-headed animals.......