Afterlife Artist:Benjamin Potter
(Above)Afterlife, bird wing suspended in honey,
8 x 8 in,1997.
The artifacts of scientific collection and classification are fascinating
to me: boxes and cases full of wings, old teeth, eggshells, carapaces. I wonder
what life resided in herbarium specimens pressed flat or labeled bird skins
stacked neatly in drawers. All these objects are objects at rest, quiescent,
animated only in the imagination of the beholder.In the Afterlife series, I have tried to make something more immediately animate. If the wings and honey in the pieces are not alive, they are at least active, their physical and metaphoric properties entwined. The honey in which the wing is suspended has many sustaining connotations: food, effort, sweetness, preservation. It is also deep amber and very dense, and it partially obscures the details of the wing because it has crystallized. This piece is a specimen out of context, a disembodied bird, a slab of honey. Benjamin Potter, 29071 1/2 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94703, U.S.A. |
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