Kelli Damron
ceramic sculptor
Ceramics Art & Perception 57
Character of Image and the Image of Character
The sculpture of Kelli Damron
By Tenille Blair-Neff
Appearing as the landscape the undulation and folds of flesh fall naturally around the female figure. Her stance is one of strength commanding the space with an air of quiet charm. The precious hands gesture in a rarely experienced contraposto tapering from the round rolls of the upper arms to the tiny control of the fingers. The figure stands before the viewer captured as if she was looking at herself within the intimate private confines of her bedroom mirror. Her confidence shines with the knowledge of her own intrinsic beauty. The intimacy of form, movement, and balance are all aesthetically important to artist Kelli Damron's figurative ceramic sculpture. Her personal vocabulary of art pursues the elegance of the large female form. Working with soft slab construction Damron maintains a connection to the vessel by building her figures hollow. From inside the form she pushes the clay outward creating the movement and naturalism of folding flesh, adding inner support structures for extra stability. Gravity is defied as the large vessel like figure balances on pointed toes giving the illusion of weightlessness.
Damron is currently an artist in residence at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York. Her studio space is alive with figures of various scale and posture, each one wearing the composed face of the artist. As you scan the studio, faces and body parts emerge from the shelves and underneath tightly wrapped plastic. Larger than life size legs relax on the table appearing like the curve of a raising mountain over the horizon. Ceramic pedestals lay about as if viewing an ancient Greek temple. Above Damron's workspace are small clippings of large women depicted by other artists. These works serve as inspiration for her sculpture; among them are works by Lucian Freud, Gaston Lachaise, and the impressionist painters. Damron credits the work of the impressionists as lending a feeling of lightness, serenity, and calm to her female figures. She strives for the mood and emotional quality of the impressionist painters in her three-dimensional clay sculptures.
Sculptural ideas develop cognitively over a long period of time for Damron. She processes and internalizes the image becoming comfortable with the concept before beginning. This serves as a test or validation, convincing her of its effectiveness as a three dimensional form. From there she does some initial sketching as a rough outline of where to begin. Sometimes she makes a small maquette of the piece, working intuitively through the clay. Damron works collaboratively with the clay allowing the dialogue between the material and herself to direct the finished piece. She usually works in a series experimenting with each form looking for new ways to expand on her initial idea. She first became attracted to clay as medium while working on the wheel at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville where she received her BFA. During her graduate studies at the School of American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, Damron began working exclusively with the figure. Clay proved the perfect material for her developing sculptural concepts. The clay, being natural and from the earth further serves as a metaphor for the historical Goddess image which Damron is referencing in her sculpture.
Damron uses a combination of pinch, modeling, and slab construction to create her large ladies. Creating herself in clay from the inside out demonstrates the process and the psychology behind unconscious material coming into consciousness. With each stretch of the malleable material Damron amplifies her understanding of herself and her body as equal to the contemporary model. The mass of the developing form exists as an external object, which projects the internal psyche of the artist. Pinching the clay into a round form, she creates the head; the facial features are then added. The delicate hands and feet are carefully modeled and carved with much attention to detail. The delicacy of the sculpted hands, feet, and facial features illustrate the admiration and reverence that Damron feels for the full figured woman. She uses a low fire white clay which she fires to cone 04. The purity of the white claybody exemplifies the preciousness of the figure. For the finished surface Damron uses terra sigillata in combination with underglazes, wax, and acrylic paint. The surface of each piece is meticulously worked until the flesh appears smooth and flawless. The finished form is glowing and radiant giving the sculpture a feeling of timeless beauty worthy of the pedestal that she stands upon.
Creating new views of common objects, people, and ideas has always been the way of artists. Damron has followed this road by reestablishing the voluptuous female figure as a contemporary ideal. Damron states "The amply proportioned woman as an object of beauty has been represented in art from the beginning of humankind. She has been painted, carved, sculpted, and modeled by the earliest known inhabitants of this planet. She has been exalted in works like the Venus of Willendorf, as well as those of Rubens, Lachaise, and many other artists and cultures throughout time". At this time in human history the large woman is perceived and stereotyped by society as lazy, gluttonous, and unhealthy. However this was not always the case, in times now past the curvaceous and voluptuous sensuality of the large woman was viewed as a sign of health and fertility. Damron's forms express the splendor of folding flesh and volume as a state of mind. She examines the large woman from the inside out, mixing internal psychological construct with physical body. She portrays the very essence of weightlessness and balance within a figure commonly perceived as awkward and heavy. While experiencing Damron's sculpture the eye flows over the undulating bodies unconsciously effecting your recognition of the fleshy woman as sensual being, while physically heavy at the same time light on her feet and playful. She uses this light and weightless figure to subtly challenge society's picture of the large woman as unhealthy and depressed.
The tragedies and blessings of life exist within our own contradictions. We create and destroy ourselves each time we adhere to the fragile and swaying evolution of society's icons. Popular culture dictates the way in which we envision our own physical and psychological development, presenting no room for an alternative. Logic would lend that not all-human creatures can fit the narrow confines of societal acceptance, leaving many of us to question the importance and validity of society's beauty ideals. We compare ourselves with the pop culture icon and upon viewing the contradiction experience a profound sense of disappointment and shame that we were unable to live up to the ideal. This shame is extremely painful, causing warlike bruises on our sense of self worth which some spend their whole lives trying to recover from. However, others rebel against the pressure of perfection and begin to find their true beauty within the contradictions that once caused so much inner turmoil. They confront reality and ask what is more essential; the character of image or the image of character? Through her figurative ceramic sculpture Damron asks the viewer this question in an effort to redefine our perceptions of beauty. She examines the contradictions between herself and society's expectations while leading us to rediscover the true character of our own image.
Society wants us to scrutinize the character of image, looking for each flaw within ourselves in an effort to fuel the economy through the purchase of beauty products and clothing. Image becomes overly important controlling our behavior in ways that we are often unaware of. Western culture has now acknowledged the presence of psychological illnesses such as Anorexia and Bulimia that have developed in an effort to control physical image and more closely resemble society's ideal. Using the language of visual image, Damron's sculptures fill a desperate void that is present in our culture. Her work gives the viewer an example of the beauty that evolves when you create the image of true character. Within each figure the essence of strength, serenity, and contentment is projected, challenging the notion that the large woman is overburdened, weak, and at war with herself. Damron recognizes the full figured female as an extension of the earth reflecting the movement, layers, and organic energy that is the landscape. She redefines and reestablishes the voluptuous ideal of history and makes a place for her in our contemporary world where thin is in. She rebels against the ideas of beauty presented during her own adolescence while maintaining a sense of the sublime. Damron is not shouting her protest; she is quietly exposing her own strength of character as a beautiful and poignant contradiction to societal ideals. In turn she teaches us as the viewer to love ourselves within our own contradictions finding our originality and uniqueness, not as a source of pain but as a life affirming sense of strength and beauty.
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