Beth Cavener Stichter creates bone, muscle, flesh and feelings from clay. In her hands, craft soars far beyond decorative value and technical virtuosity — body language and facial expressions transform these objects into beings frozen mid-motion. With their inexorable pull on emotions, the Ohio artist’s sculptures could serve as barometers of empathy.
Among the contorted bodies of hares and horses are composites of species — but the longer you lookat any of them, the more human attributes you’ll detect. These psychological portraits of real people project vulnerability in response to being cornered, tormented or trapped by ropes, chains, pulleys, and base desires.
Stichter’s works are among 50 contemporary treasures featured in the Renwick Craft Invitational 2007. In “One Last Word,” a rabbit hangs by an iron collar braced to a wall. We feel the involuntary kick of hind legs, the tense, splayed paws, the trembling, the helplessness, yet also a flash of defiance directed at the unseen captor.
With a nod to Edouard Manet’s reclining nude prostitute, Stichter’s “Olympia” presents a goat blindfolded and stretched on the ground, underbelly exposed, innocence and dignity lost. A terrified critter silently pleads the name of another work, “please.” As the lassoed colt/goat chimera of “Confessions and Convictions” struggles desperately to get back on her feet, glimpses of human-like ribs and shoulders emerge like mirages. These creatures realize their fates will be determined by someone else’s compassion or cruelty.
Pointing to the heartwrenching, cowering subject of “i am no one,” Renwick curator Jane Milosch explained that Stichter used the scale of her own torso. Having honed her powers of observation during an early career in microbiology, the artist painstakingly mixes and molds materials to achieve pliable, skin-like qualities. You can view her creative process — maquette, armature, body parts, removing supports, scoring, joining, hollowing out — on her Webpage, www.followtheblackrabbit.com.
Unifying the invitational’s quartet of experiences are mastery of expression through the artist’s chosen materials, experimentation, and working from elements of nature — hence the exhibition’s name, From the Ground Up.
Now based in Stockholm, Sweden Paula Bartron creates minimalist geometric forms of glass that look like archeological finds from some magical lost kingdom or space alien outpost. Using inventive blown and sandcasting techniques, she abandons the medium’s traditional transparency for an opaque luminosity. The encrusted surfaces are super-tactile, the colors radiant, from cobalt blue to iridescent vermillion. It’s hard to take your eyes off of “Red Cylinder,” which glows from within like molten lava.
Jocelyn Châteauvert transforms paper from supporting role to star. Her handmade, folded, molded and twisted paper designs emerge in witty jewelry, super-sized room decor and illuminated nature sculptures.
Tough, fibrous and beautiful, her papers derive from abaca, which comes from banana leaves, and flax, augmented with natural dyes and silver. Highlights include “Scratch,” a large veil of copper-coated paper fronds fronting a densely textured black forest backdrop — itself backed with a sprightly abstract spread of cutouts. The final gallery plunges you into a pond topped by the Charleston, S.C., artist’s swaying “Lily Clouds” dappled with diffused sunbeams of her own design.
The references in Beth Lipman’s brilliant hand-sculpted and blown glassworks span Roman empire excesses to Dutch masters to trompe l’oeil. The Wisconsin artist’s 20-foot piece d’ resistance, “Bancketje,” reinterprets the 17th century still-life in a banquet table overflowing with 400 pieces of meticulously crafted glass — plates and vases, roaming animal figurines and fruits, goblets upended and vessels shattered upon the floor.
Glinting with light, this jaw-dropper simultaneously mourns and celebrates decadence — while flooding this parlor with residual energy from the raucous night before. Lipman forgoes color to achieve pure optical opulence.
Milosch recalled a story that unlocks a secret to this artful excursion. When asked how long it took to make her clever, strategically fitted paper adornment “Eve,” Châteauvert replied: “All my life.”
From the Ground Up
On view through July 22
» Venue: Renwick Gallery, Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW
» Info: 202-633-1000; www.americanart.si.edu
» Related event: Artists’ Roundtable. Noon to 1:30 p.m. March 30 featuring the four artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Eighth and F streets NW
