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Beth Cavener Stichter Workshop

by Friederike Rahn, Shadbolt Centre

Beth Cavener Stichter demonstrates her sculpture techniques. Photos by Charmian Nimmo.

The American sculptor Beth Cavener Stichter’s sculptures are imposingly large, fiercely and expressively sculpted, exquisitely crafted and installed. For an artist of this stature to share her process and philosophy and stories is an act of generosity and a gift to our B.C. clay community. Beth’s recent three-day workshop and public lecture at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in September was an intimate and accessible look at this artist’s process.

On Friday afternoon, in the dramatically lit Studio Theatre, Beth began her workshop in the simplest of ways. Talking about the beginning of an idea for a figure, deciding on the emotional states she wanted to express, and how to give that expression a physical form, she tooka foot-long coil of clay and began to bend and shape it into a series of profiles, to show how a simple line can provoke a specific emotional state. The lovely thing about this demo was how simple and accessible this process was, like child’s play. As she manipulated her Gumby- like figure, Beth talked about anxiety, longing, and other complex emotional states and gave very personal examples of how these are playing out in her life right now. Her combination of vulnerability and self-deprecating humor gave the presentation warmth and intimacy.

Moving from the simple Gumby figure, Beth began working on a maquette, building clay onto a small armature which she constructed from threaded metal pipes. Over the afternoon, as the conversation flowed, a three-dimensional sketch of an inverted hare, doubled over ina fetal-like position, its legs stretched expressively upward, its forelegs very human in their anatomy, emerged from the sculptor’s hands. She explained her armature system as she attached thin dowels to build the limbs onto, then gave a detailed slide talk explaining the technical details of her process.

Over the next two days, Beth continued work on the hare sculpture, first building a large armature out of threaded pipe and wooden dowels, a system which allows for great flexibility in manipulating the large scale form all the way through the building process. Rather than making it “look easy” she was completely open with the audience with her struggles to overcome the many technical and formal challenges that sculpting at such a large scale presents. The building demonstration was interspersed with detailed slide talks to illustrate the post firing assembly and installation of her works, as well as a “hands on” portion in which participants each made an eyeball out of a fist sized ball of clay, exploring the range of expression this body part communicates. At the conclusion of Sunday’s demo, the large hare was cut apart and removed from the armature, as Beth described the intricacies of dismembering, sectioning, hollowing, re-sculpting, and re-assembling the figure.

It is rare for a Canadian audience to have access to a presentation from such a highly regarded artist, and the participants left this workshop inspired by Beth Cavener Stichter’s personal approach, her technical mastery and tenacity, as well as her joy in the art making

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