Artist: Elizabeth Balcomb
Medium: Paper clay
Size: 17cm x 17cm x 50cm
Interpretation
Balcomb explains on her website how, despite her aptitude in art, she studied nature conservation and worked in environmental education. She still lives and works in the rural KZN midlands.
This love of Nature comes through in the sculpture.
The body language of the young girl suggests innocence and shyness with her her hands and feet in an almost ballet-like pose. Her old-fashioned dress emphasizes this innocence wit its pretty pastel turquoise colour.
The cat-like features suggest the timid creature is one with Nature, and seems, to me, to question the evolutionary position of the human species.
Balcomb’s website
The sculpture is small (70cm hgh), and is finely modelled from paper clay.
This is made from paper pulp and white earthenware clay, and is a strong body which can be joined while quite dry.
The paper burns out at about 200OC, and the clay is bisqued until about 960oC. The glaze colour is then applied when cold, and fired to its correct temperature. (1060oC)
The hollow dress is draped and folded from a thin slab of textured (impressed) clay. The cat head, arms and legs seem to have been made separately and joined afterwards with a ‘scratch and slip’ method.
The figure balances on a base which seems to have been press moulded from an ice cream tub - a child-like structure.