BARBARA BALZER

Sometimes peace is more appealing than wisdom.

Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother, “If you don’t have a dog, at least one, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong about your life.“ Van Gogh never had a dog. My figures offer him one.

Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother, “If you don’t have a dog, at least one, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong about your life.“ Van Gogh never had a dog. My figures offer him one.

I am honored that my good friend’s daughter asked me to create urns for her mother and their precious pup. I hope that Brenda’s captured her joyous, open, renegade spirit.

A man went where he wasn’t wanted. He repeatedly became a guest on a talk show the propagated political views antithetical to his own. At first, the host either interrupted or ridiculed him. But he kept returning. Eventually, the host let him finish talking. The host began thanking him for stopping by. A reporter, impressed by the man’s quiet tenacity, called him a “rhetorical assassin”. I guess he meant to flatter the man, suggesting he was stealthily going into enemy territory. But when his friends ask the man why he kept returning to a program where he had been repeatedly treated disrespectfully, he explained that he’d hoped to expose what were otherwise nice people to ideas they probably hadn’t heard on the talk show.

I thought the men’s reasons were kind. So my figure is offering letters and symbols from the alphabets of different countries and tribes: Arabic, cuneiforms, hieroglyphs, Chinese characters. Babel-like.

More important than the content of the offer is the gesture of offering itself.

My figures offering alphabets, symbols, and scrolls were sculpted in response to witnessing a kind gesture during a divisive time.

I watched a political candidate visit a talk show that espoused views antithetical to his own. Although the show hosts either interrupted or ridiculed him, he remained poised and kept returning. Soon, the hosts not only let him finish talking, they thanked him for stopping by. When asked why he’d kept returning after being treated so poorly, the man answered that he’d hoped to offer nice people ideas they might not otherwise be exposed to and vice versa. I thought his reason was kind: more important than the content of the offer was the gesture of offering itself.

In response, I began sculpting this series of figures offering letters and symbols from alphabets, past and present, of different countries and tribes: cuneiforms, hieroglyphs, Arabic and Chinese characters, Babel-like. Or inscrutable gold-trimmed scrolls. They come by horse and longboat into a wilderness, emboldened by a belief that ideas, manifested by colorful polka-dotted alphabets, symbols, and scrolls, can be shared.

My figures offering alphabets, symbols, and scrolls were sculpted in response to witnessing a kind gesture during a divisive time.

I watched a political candidate visit a talk show that espoused views antithetical to his own. Although the show hosts either interrupted or ridiculed him, he remained poised and kept returning. Soon, the hosts not only let him finish talking, they thanked him for stopping by. When asked why he’d kept returning after being treated so poorly, the man answered that he’d hoped to offer nice people ideas they might not otherwise be exposed to and vice versa. I thought his reason was kind: more important than the content of the offer was the gesture of offering itself.

In response, I began sculpting this series of figures offering letters and symbols from alphabets, past and present, of different countries and tribes: cuneiforms, hieroglyphs, Arabic and Chinese characters, Babel-like. Or inscrutable gold-trimmed scrolls. They come by horse and longboat into a wilderness, emboldened by a belief that ideas, manifested by colorful polka-dotted alphabets, symbols, and scrolls, can be shared.

This sculpture is my response to a National Geographic program about monkeys. The narrator said that while scientists now allow that monkeys’ intelligence may be higher than previously thought, scientists continue to believe that the emotional lives of monkeys remain different than, and implicitly inferior to, ours. While humans are able to form loving bonds, he explained, monkeys, though able to bond, are inherently more promiscuous. As evidence, monkeys are shown high up in a tree eating and grooming together when a male monkey comes up from behind and initiates sex with an otherwise occupied monkey. The initiator finishes and departs while the other monkey continues eating or grooming seemingly unperturbed. The narrator explains that an abrupt occasional act like this serves to both relieve stress in the initiator and keep peace within the group.

I began to wonder how any of us can know what any act serves to do for another. Scientists can conduct studies and accrue averages but their findings will always be ineluctably infused with their own embedded prejudices. How can they not be? So while some humans conduct their lives free of commitment or loyalty, I suspect some monkeys li theirs with incomprehensible devotion and breath-taking selflessness.

So I sculpted these three figures. One creates and protects a space for two fellows, though alien, guests on the planet who she suspects have a shared need to tenderly express themselves, unwitnessed and unjudged by scientists.

[Collection of Shady Lane Country Club, Barbados]

I used to believe beautiful people relied solely on their beauty to make their way in the world. So I was always surprised when a beautiful person was funny or smart. This work, "Three Graces Masquerading as Mirth", plays with my youthful and shameful assumption.

The Three Graces in Greek mythology are renowned only for their beauty. This sculpture represents what I imagine to be the aftermath of the goddesses' attempt to expand what they offer mankind. Having heard that humor is a sign of intelligence, they want to expand what they have to offer to include humor, the ability to make mankind laugh.

Accordingly, one Grace uses her left hand to form a shadow puppet whose shadow dances on the wall behind her. The second Grace wears a feathered trick-arrow that appears to pierce her head from ear to ear like the comedian Steve Martin famously wears. The third Grace holds an overdetermined "smile on a stick", in front of her lovely but noncommittal mouth. Intent on increasing their chances of inducing laughter, knock-knock jokes are inscribed in silver ink along the sides of their gray and beaded white striped tunics.

By the look on their faces, however, the Graces' attempts at humor have not been successful. Their faces remain stoic, preoccupied. This work documents the aftermath of the Graces' sincere but failed first attempt to make us laugh. They remain intent, however, on contributing more than beauty to the human conversation. The Graces are stubborn. We await their second attempt.

[Collection of Dr. Beverly Walters]

Disappointed by my country's rampant recent divisiveness, I wanted to explore attitudes of peacefulness and trust. My passion is sculpting the human head and human hands. Intelligence and expression are registered in the face and important information is stored and communicated by hands. This work, like most of my work, features both human heads and hands. Both figures are holding a "smile on a stick" in front of their neutral mouths. The distance between the "smile on a stick" and their mouths is filled with a universe of possible responses to the ever-unfolding phenomena before them. Because they are diplomatic, both figures limit themselves to countering the stories and exchanges they witness daily with a smile at the end of the stick. They are neither duplicitous nor inscrutable; they are eternally empathetic.

Additionally, the figures' headdresses protect them. They are inspired by a little boy in the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy". He is walking alone through a path in the Australian outback when he encounters a fox. Instead of being afraid, he immediately raises his arms straight-up, skyward. The fox turns and runs. The boy continues on his way. He has learned early that if he makes himself appear taller than he is, he diplomatically prevents a confrontation; predators leave.

[Private Collection]

Having practiced law for years, I was mesmerized by a felon I heard say, "If I'd known you were a fortune teller, I never would have robbed you". The defendant, behind a glass partition, promised this to his scowling victim. She sat across from him in the courtroom in a documentary about the Russian judicial system. My first thought was if she was a fortune-teller, why didn't she see that she was about to be robbed and avoid her own victimization.

I felt compelled to sculpt this figure, the young Russian defendant twirling through life with ease. He is joyfully content with his provisional and occasionally workable understanding of society. Curiously, he has genuine respect for the powers of a dubious fortune-teller while entertaining little use for what he undoubtedly perceives to be the inhibiting laws of a judicial system. He mesmerized me.

[Collection of Ben Baldwin and Lagran Saunders]

My figures offering alphabets, symbols, and scrolls were sculpted in response to witnessing a kind gesture during a divisive time.

I watched a political candidate visit a talk show that espoused views antithetical to his own. Although the show hosts either interrupted or ridiculed him, he remained poised and kept returning. Soon, the hosts not only let him finish talking, they thanked him for stopping by. When asked why he’d kept returning after being treated so poorly, the man answered that he’d hoped to offer nice people ideas they might not otherwise be exposed to and vice versa. I thought his reason was kind: more important than the content of the offer was the gesture of offering itself.

In response, I began sculpting this series of figures offering letters and symbols from alphabets, past and present, of different countries and tribes: cuneiforms, hieroglyphs, Arabic and Chinese characters, Babel-like. Or inscrutable gold-trimmed scrolls. They come by horse and longboat into a wilderness, emboldened by a belief that ideas, manifested by colorful polka-dotted alphabets, symbols, and scrolls, can be shared.

Two figures go forward, the smaller one without arms or legs, the larger one, deaf and blind. “Amor Fati” is Latin for “Love of one’s fate”. A lame Greek slave named Epictetus founded the Stoic philosophy, later followed by emperors, suggesting all that happens, including suffering and loss, is good. That a wise person is not only resilient to misfortune beyond his control, he embraces it. He looks neither backward nor forward. If the necessary event must unfold, the stoic doesn’t conceal it or merely endure it, he loves it.

Upon visiting a Marcel Duchamp exhibition at the Hirshorn Museum in Washington D.C., I learned that Duchamp was primarily a chess player, not an artist. He won the 1929 Paris Chess Olympiad... My figure is offering a sculptural apology to him: a copper trayful of chess pieces and urinals. The elements reference both his love for chess and his inadvertent invention of Conceptual art.

After attempts at painting, Duchamp playfully but profoundly brought Conceptual Art into the world by simply flipping a store-bought porcelain urinal 90 degrees, calling it "Fountain", and entering it into the 1917 Society of Independent Artists Exhibition. When it was rejected as arr, Duchamp declared "Art is what I say it is", elevated the role of concept over fabrication in art, and returned to playing chess.

However, unintended irony followed. While Duchamp bought the original urinal from a Fifth Avenue hardware store and discarded it after the exhibition, when asked, he authorized 13 copies of the store-bought urinal to be fabricated for sale to wealthy patrons and museums. So, for me, a delicious irony resulted: Fabrication had quickly returned to its traditional prominence over the concept in the production of art. Duchamp had proposed the novel idea that art can be based on an artist's concept or idea and not the fabrication of a product by the artist's hand. But humans are drawn to evidence of thought, not to thought alone, and demand the production of a product. So, like caught fish that stay fresh for only a few days, Duchamp's idea that his original "Fountain" was a unique and ephemeral work of Conceptual Art didn't last long. And I sculpted this apology to Duchamp.

[Collection of Steve and Brenda Meisburg]

I wanted to explore my observation of human responses to others' attempts at humor; our attempts to use humor to make each other feel comfortable or feel accepted, with some efforts more successful than others.

This installation, "Make Me Laugh," is a study of faces caught in states of laughter. The work features eight male and female ceramic busts depicting a spectrum of responses to attempts at humor. At one end of the spectrum is a female figure holding a "smile on a stick" in front of her preoccupied face. Perhaps this relieves her of the work of forming a genuine response. While inauthentic, her response is diplomatic.

At the other end of the spectrum is the righteous guffaw that can sometimes be confused with expressions of pain. Two guffawing male figures, their heads thrown back, eyes shut tight, are pointing at each, wincing as if in almost unbearable pain.

This work is a self-portrait of me and my unfinished business. Freud declared "Emotions are buried in the heavy matter of the body", in his book, "The Interpretation of Dreams". He proposed that the mechanism of repression can protect us from unwanted emotions only temporarily. Emotions never disappear. If not allowed to surface and be put to rest, they are buried alive inside us and become unfinished business to surface later in undesirable and indirect ways.

This work is a self-portrait of my unfinished business. .A female figure is extended horizontally atop a pale blue and burgundy striped rectangular pillow as if she is flying.. Fastened to her back by thin copper wires are gold-trimmed white scrolls inscribed in gold ink with words like "Disidero", Italian for "I desire." The scrolls contain unresolved memories and emotions. Unless and until she acknowledges and addresses them, the female is doomed to carry them with her.

The pedestal in the shape of a pillow is to suggest that the figure may be dreaming. Inscribed in gold ink at the base of the pillow in cursive are the words, "Emotions are buried in the heavy matter of the body".

[Collection of Ms. Mary Churchill]

My sister and I, formerly close laughing buddies, did not speak to each other in the five years before she passed. I immediately thought of her upon seeing an anonymous 17th Century painting, "Ladies Chomoledeley", at the Tate Museum in London. The work depicts two wasp-waisted women seated upright, side-by-side, in bed, fully dressed in elaborate lace and jewelry. The women are holding seemingly identical babies swaddled in burgundy blankets. At first glance, the women appear identical. They are not.

A closer inspection reveals that details of their clothing are subtly different and that their eyes are different colors; one has blue, the other, brown.

Tradition has it that the painting depicts two aristocratic sisters who were born, married, and gave birth on the same day. The painting is said to celebrate their sameness.

After seeing this painting, I sculpted this tribute to my sister. We had grown up together, sharing bunk beds, days-of-week underwear, and library books. We skipped ballet together. We could make each other laugh until we wet our pants. Although I was 18 months older and 2 inches shorter, people said we looked alike. My sister excelled in everything she did, including joining a cult. We slowly grew apart. She tried to get me to join the cult. I tried to win her back with laughter. We both failed. And now she is gone.

My sister's passing made me think about those two long ago women in that far away painting in England and their celebrated sameness. I wondered if they remained close. What happened to their babies? Who died first? While trying to convince myself that the idea of separateness is an illusion and nothing is forever, I began to sculpt a response to the painting. The women in the painting don't have legs. I sculpted legs for my sisters as much to enable them to walk away as to, possibly, return to each other. Moreover, I transformed the sleeping babies into balloons to allow them to slowly drift apart if they similarly found the need.

Two figures of ambiguous gender in matching white and lavender jewel-like smocks are bound with twine. They are straining to free themselves. One is Id, the other Ego. One sometimes wears a fedora. Freud hasn't been born yet so these two elements of the subconscious are trapped and without either guidance or direction. They must wait for Freud to be born to learn what they are supposed to do. Meanwhile, they wiggle and squirm.

[Collection of Ms. Pegoty Packman]

This figure is a self-portrait of me deciding to leave practicing the law to attend art school at the age of 50. After taking a bubble bath to cleanse me of all self-doubt, I bicycled to the university to begin attending classes for a Master's Degree in Fine Arts.

A female figure is seated atop a pale blue and brown polka-dotted two-headed horse. One horse faces the past; the other, the future. The figure wears a mustard yellow shirt with thin gold vertical lines and white leggings that resemble the foam from a bubble bath. Seated upright, looking clearly in front of her, she is not alone. Besides the horse, she is accompanied by two tiny beasts coiling out from her headdress like searching antennas. They are intended to prevent the sounds of disparagement and self-doubt from entering her ears

With this work, I wanted to communicate my discomfort of being a witness. I wanted the figures constrained but filled with knowledge. The first task of a witness is to not look away. This work features three bound but vigilant female figures. The sensibility and palette of the work were inspired by Bill Viola's video, "The Greeting", wherein three women in flowing gowns slowly come together in a casual street meeting. Viola himself was inspired by Pontormo's 16th-century painting, "The Visitation", wherein a more serious and specific meeting was depicted, a miracle; the moment of Mary's visitation as witnessed by two seemingly preoccupied older women.

In his video, Viola protracts the moment depicted in Pontormo's painting to reveal, in slow motion, the complexity of emotions embedded in a simple human encounter. In my work, I turn the attention of the three women in the video from each other outward to the viewer. The women are no longer focused on or distracted by the exchange among themselves: they are now concerned with an unclear event outside of themselves. Each of the three women is becoming a "witness" to something unseen by the viewer. Bound, figuratively or metaphorically, the females' options are presently limited. They cannot stop events from unfolding. They cannot prevent anything. But they can perform the first difficult task of the witness: to not look away.

I knew that when I read Frank Lloyd Wright had declared "Every house is a missionary", I would sculpt a response. By that, Lloyd Wright meant that creative responses and solutions were embedded into the shelters he designed. Similarly, when a collector buys a work of art, it is because s/he was moved by the things that the work of art makes him or her think about, the ideas he or she understood to be embedded in it

The figure, a collector, is, therefore, cradling a unicorn's head, symbolizing something rare and embued in mystery, in her right hand and protecting it with her left hand.

The Collector figure offers the. The creatures may be manifestations of a part of the Collector that align with the energy of the artist.

[Collection of Dr. Beverly Walters]

I have come to believe that desire is an end in itself. Desire is not prologued to something else, It is not an unfinished, inferior state driven by anticipation. It is not on a continuum to consciousness or fulfillment. There are many ways to be awake. It is a state equal to the state at the other end of the spectrum, satisfaction, and the infinite states between, all of which have their virtues.

We each emerge from a primordial womb, wonderfully bombarded by a myriad of phenomena, colorful, loud, soft, glittery. Captivated, we learn, we age, we impose an imaginary order on things, and continually revise it. So I sculpted the figure atop the pillow about to learn something wonderful, or not. But, either way, she is present. Escorted and protected by the two small guardian beasts coiling out of her headdress, she is content but open. Inscribed in cursive in silver ink, hidden between her legs, is the phrase "Takes advantage of the brain's plasticity".

[Private Collection]

When I was working as a young waitress, my boss gratuitously told me I was cleaning a counter wrong. I quit that day, returned to school, and eventually became a lawyer. For years after, I witnessed displays of gratuitous power and sexism. This work is intended to playfully invert the power structure embedded in the Greek myth of "Leda and the Swan" found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. You see an armless frontal 3/4 lifesize female bust. Atop her head is a rust-pink swan with a long horizontally rose and white striped neck. Under a slightly diagonal thin neckline are narrow pink and beaded white vertical stripes extending to her waist. Some, under her left breast, are interrupted by the word "float" scratched into the clay in cursive.

In the myth, Zeus, roused by Leda's beauty, transforms himself into a magnificent swan portraying himself as a bird escaping from a bird of prey. Rescued by the unsuspecting Leda, Zeus lays next to her by the river, seduces and impregnates her. Zeus, therefore, king of the Olympian gods, tricks the hapless river nymph into bending her will to his.

This sculpture seeks to invert the power structure between Zeus and Leda in three ways: by use of scale, the direction faced by each figure, and their proximate location in relation to each other. First, the swan, Zeus, is significantly smaller, not larger, than Leda, the river nymph. Second, the female is faced frontal making bold upward eye contact toward the viewer. The swan, by contrast, at a 45-degree angle, is unable to make eye contact with the viewer. In paintings referencing this myth by Michelangelo and DiVinci, the swan is depicted as large, if not larger, than Leda, its long wings, neck, or beak wrapped around her body, engulfing and controlling her movement. In my work, the swan does not control Leda. Instead, barely touching her, he is banished to balance precariously atop her head. Accordingly, if Leda elects to tilt her head to the left, to the right, or to shrug, Zeus will tumble to his fate. To survive, therefore, Zeus must now be ever vigilant, ready to anticipate and accommodate Leda's every move.

In the myth of Narcissus and Echo, Zeus orders the mountain nymph Echo to distract his wife while he pursues a dalliance. When Echo's efforts fail, Zeus curses her to forever repeat the last words she hears. When Echo meets the beautiful hunter Narcissus in the forest, therefore, she can't express her love for him; she can only repeat his words back to him. Confused, he dismisses her and continues on. Echo, forlorn, wastes away and dies. Later, seeing his reflection In the water, Narcissus is also transfixed by his beauty. Not understanding that the beautiful boy unresponsive to his overtures is himself, forlorn, he also slowly wastes away and dies.

My sculpture depicts an alternative ending to the myth. Inscribed across Narcissus' chest are the words, "To see only one's self is a form of blindness". Here, two mortals don't individually succumb to, but, instead, together survive a god's curse and are negotiating a new way forward.

The easiest way for royalty to share gossip in 1500's Paris was to commission a painting. Gabrielle d'Estrees, therefore, commissioned "Ladies at Their Bath", an anonymous work now in the Louvre Museum, to announce she was the King's mistress.

The painting depicts Gabrielle and her sister, both facing the viewer, waist-deep in a bath. Gabrielle is holding up a gold ring for the viewer to see evidencing that she is Henry IV's mistress. Her sister, pinching one of Gabrielle's nipples as if to induce lactation, is telling the world that Gabrielle is also carrying the King's child.

I have sculpted several responses to this painting. In this iteration, I give the lady in the bath an inner-tube to save her from her sad future. After accompanying Henry into battle, living in tents, cleaning his uniforms, making his meals, and having three children together, she dies at 25. This sculpture depicts Gabrielle at the height of her happiness, with only an element of foreboding, an inner tube.

[Private Collection]

[Private Collection]

[Collection of Dr. Beverly Walters]

A Chinese allegory tells of a monkey and the moon. A monkey balances on a tree limb reaching for the reflection of the moon in the water below. He believes it is the actual moon. He intends to strain and strain until he either grasps the reflected moon or falls in the water and dies.

In the allegory, the moon is enlightenment, the highest state of being where individual desires and suffering go away. What the monkey doesn't know is that enlightenment isn't attained through effort or grasping. It Is attained by letting go, yielding, and disappearing into "the deep pool of reality".

My sculpture depicts an alternative ending to the allegory. A man walks by and sees the monkey struggling. Being kind-hearted, he wants to relieve the monkey's suffering. He gives the monkey the moon's reflection.

We are all the Monkey.

[Collection of Yingge Museum, Taiwan]

[Collection of Steve and Brenda Meisburg]

[Collection of Dennis and Luana Goodwin]

In my work, I regularly revisit the concept of the Three Graces, historically tapped only for their beauty. In my work, they repeatedly try to expand what they have to offer the human conversation, intelligence, humor, etc., with varying degrees of success. In this iteration, the three women are represented by giant frontal half heads. On the side of each head are their attempts at evidencing or imparting wisdom. In the gold script on the black background are phrases such as "After I finish reading a book, I eat the last page" or "Poems are never finished; they are abandoned".

[Private Collection]

This work began as a thank-you sculpture for friends. They had taken care of my 14 year old American Staffordshire (pit bull), Titan, for three months while I was an artist-in-residence in Taiwan. It featured Betty and her beloved lost son on a two-headed horse, one horse faces the past, the other, the future. I had completed the gift when Titan passed. So he was included to join them.

[Collection of Darrel and Betty Branhagen]

[Collection of Cuz-Napoca Museum of Art]

[Collection of Macon Museum of Art and Science]

When the Queen opened the castle door on a rainy night, she didn’t believe the bedraggled barefoot girl before her. She said she was a princess. She claimed she had gotten lost while picking flowers when the storm came. The Queen, who had a handsome unattached son, let her in. If the girl was a real princess, the Queen thought, she could marry her son and they could live happily ever after. But she couldn’t take the girl’s word; she had to test her.

A real princess, the Queen knew, one who would help her son rule the kingdom, would have to be sensitive. She would have to care about the needs of the people over which she would help rule.

So the Queen surreptitiously placed a tiny green pea under 40 fat mattresses and then welcomed the girl to stay the night on the tall bed. If she was really a princess, she wouldn’t be able to sleep because of the discomfort caused by the tiny pea. If she wasn’t a princess, oblivious, she would have a good night’s rest.

The next morning, the Queen entered the room to find the princess sitting up, black and blue, regretfully reporting she had had a fitful night. My series of Princess and the Pea sculptures capture the image of the sleepless Princess in the morning.

A fun thought experiment would be to contemplate putting a tiny green pea under some of today’s world leaders and wait to see who couldn’t fall asleep and who could sleep like a baby.

[Private Collection]

When the Queen opened the castle door on a rainy night, she didn’t believe the bedraggled barefoot girl before her. She said she was a princess. She claimed she had gotten lost while picking flowers when the storm came. The Queen, who had a handsome unattached son, let her in. If the girl was a real princess, the Queen thought, she could marry her son and they could live happily ever after. But she couldn’t take the girl’s word; she had to test her.

A real princess, the Queen knew, one who would help her son rule the kingdom, would have to be sensitive. She would have to care about the needs of the people over which she would help rule.

So the Queen surreptitiously placed a tiny green pea under 40 fat mattresses and then welcomed the girl to stay the night on the tall bed. If she was really a princess, she wouldn’t be able to sleep because of the discomfort caused by the tiny pea. If she wasn’t a princess, oblivious, she would have a good night’s rest.

The next morning, the Queen entered the room to find the princess sitting up, black and blue, regretfully reporting she had had a fitful night. My series of Princess and the Pea sculptures capture the image of the sleepless Princess in the morning.

A fun thought experiment would be to contemplate putting a tiny green pea under some of today’s world leaders and wait to see who couldn’t fall asleep and who could sleep like a baby.

[Private Collection]

When the Queen opened the castle door on a rainy night, she didn’t believe the bedraggled barefoot girl before her. She said she was a princess. She claimed she had gotten lost while picking flowers when the storm came. The Queen, who had a handsome unattached son, let her in. If the girl was a real princess, the Queen thought, she could marry her son and they could live happily ever after. But she couldn’t take the girl’s word; she had to test her.

A real princess, the Queen knew, one who would help her son rule the kingdom, would have to be sensitive. She would have to care about the needs of the people over which she would help rule.

So the Queen surreptitiously placed a tiny green pea under 40 fat mattresses and then welcomed the girl to stay the night on the tall bed. If she was really a princess, she wouldn’t be able to sleep because of the discomfort caused by the tiny pea. If she wasn’t a princess, oblivious, she would have a good night’s rest.

The next morning, the Queen entered the room to find the princess sitting up, black and blue, regretfully reporting she had had a fitful night. My series of Princess and the Pea sculptures capture the image of the sleepless Princess in the morning.

A fun thought experiment would be to contemplate putting a tiny green pea under some of today’s world leaders and wait to see who couldn’t fall asleep and who could sleep like a baby.

[Private Collection]

[Romanian Museum Collection]

[Collection of Dr. Beverly Walters]

[Collection of Richard Harris]

[Collection of Marc and Veronique Wydert-Dockendorf]

Featured in Ceramics Art + Perception #105

[Collection of Dr. Beverly Walters]

Installation