The daughter of a taxidermist, ceramic artist Lisa Merida-Paytes was surrounded by unusual sights when she was growing up: hanging carcasses and freezers full of animal hides were common to her surroundings. So it comes as no surprise that her artwork reflects what surrounded her as a kid. She uses her ceramic work to come to terms with the graphic imagery of her childhood. In her words, she tries “to evoke the animal spirit that was once destroyed and to make amends for the discord and waste".
Christopher David White
White is a ceramics artist. This piece is called Cycle of Decay. His impeccably detailed ceramic sculpture is particularly impressive as it looks like petrified wood, even on close inspection the knotted and twisting veins of the tree branch look almost exactly like old wood.
Polly Morgan
Morgan is a taxidermy artist, she uses animals that are road casualties or are donated to her by pet owners. Morgan's work explores preserving animals that would have otherwise decomposed.
Camille Claudel
Torso of Clotho. Clotho is the youngest of the Three Fates or Moirai, in ancient Greek mythology. She was responsible for spinning the thread of human life. This highly impressive plaster is one of Claudel's most unusual figures: a haggard old woman, well marked by physical decay, her body is skin and bones.
Manuel Martà Moreno
Sculptor Manuel Martà Moreno lives and works in Valencia, Spain and forms these wonderful
figurative pieces out of iron nuts. Via email Moreno says that he is most interested in showing the passage of time, the transience of life, and our collective awareness of our own mortality, seemingly evidenced by the spectre of decay at the edges of his works.
Kate McDowell
In her delicate crafted porcelain sculptures conceptual artist Kate McDowell expresses her interpretation of the clash between the natural world and the modern-day environmental impact of industrialized society. The resulting works can be equal parts amusing and disturbing as the anatomical forms of humans and animals become inexplicably intertwined in her delicate porcelain forms. Via her artist statment:
In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats.
