Heidi Moller Somsen’s exhibits can get messy. Performance has increasingly become a part of the sculptor’s practice, and at recent shows she has used the clay for her sculptures in transformative ways — molding it by slapping it against her body, or using her foot to smear a mound of it across the gallery floor, while the branches attached to her arms scrape and screech their way over the concrete. In her MFA final exhibit Grafted, at the Gittins Gallery through July 15, things are a bit neater; the only clay present has been fired, into figures of women and children with branches grafted on to their bodies. Jared Christensen stepped into Somsen’s studio this month to see what her work space looks like.
Check out his photographic essay in the July 2011 edition of 15 Bytes.
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Studio Space
Jared Christensen’s photo essay of artist Somsen’s work and workspace was particularly enjoyable as his photography let the art and artist, though absent, speak for themselves. And, his essay choices revealed not only the end product but the course of the artist’s creativity. Particularly the image of the shelves of supplies, containers even from someone’s, perhaps even Somsen’s own kitchen, amidst some partially finished cast aside clay form, shows the days-in-the-life organic and primal origins and putterings that emerge as an end product after loving thought, cutting twists of the carving tool and prosthetic limbs (literally) . Jared captured the art’s raw cynicism using the natural “what you see is what you get” light from the studio window to reveal the open-mouthed or tight lipped faces of the tortured forms so Lilith like in their statements of power and submission. My compliments to both the photographer and artist! Well done!
Within minutes of viewing the strange beauty of Heidi’s new work (new to me) I was so inspired I went into my own studio with a surge of energy uncommon for so late at night. She has passed into another dimension where angles shed their wings. Jared’s choice of what to show, how to light it and where to shoot from combine to make this article a stunner! Love you both!