Kelly Garrett Rathbone

 

Artists Statement

 

Ceramic and glass, and often the combination of the two, are the materials I've found best to facilitate my ideas in sculpture. They are my means to create surreal documentations of my life, thoughts, and feelings that make up a personal "cabinet of curiosities." 


As I lived and studied in Italy, I have been exposed to and inspired by the classical works of such great artist's as Michelangelo, Bernini, and Donatello, (to name a few most famous names.)  Much of the art I saw depicted Biblical stories or themes and provoked my thoughts and curiosity. As a result of this inspiration, in my own work I strive to bridge the classical and historical European aesthetic and and ideas with a modern sensibility that is reflective of my own cultural upbringing; I take a contemporary and personal approach.
Through my sculpture, some themes explored are: the human search and struggle for significance and salvation; the emotions that evolve from relationships we establish and develop throughout our lives; "beauty" and the dominant view of idealism that transcends cultures. 

Using symbols rooted in historical events, mythology, and religion, I sculpt narratives, focusing on expressiveness and emotion by way of exaggeration and surrealism.  I strive to make sculpture that presents itself as ultimately interesting, beautiful, and deliberate to provoke more questions than answers.
Why the use of glass?

....different reasons for different pieces.

Glass, being a liquid, has a fluidity that one cannot get in molding clay. In my work, I focus on emotion, and that is best shown in the facial expressions and arms and hands of the sculptures. It creates a very gestured expressiveness that is perfect for the arms and hands I wish to create. 

Also, the clarity and fragility become metaphors. Gestures representing thoughts and feelings. Arms being clear can refer to phantom limbs...using that as a metaphor for phantom feelings, acts, inabilities. They could refer to something supernatural.

Garret Rathbone

 


l'Annunciazion
earthenware, hot sculpted glass, glazes, bronze luster and steel
33 x 19 x 18 inches
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