About Clay Bodies

The term “clay body” is used by those who work in clay to describe their material. A white clay body is smooth and malleable. When it is fired at a relatively high temperature it remains pure white, becoming as impermeable to water as glass. Fired in sawdust at a lower temperature, it takes on a smoky darkness. Reddish, coarse, terra cotta bodies are much rougher, and even when fired remains quite porous. The many impurities found in terra cotta give it both color and texture. The choice to begin with white clay, terra cotta, or another type of clay body affects both how the artist will proceed and how the finished piece will look.

The connection between human bodies and clay is both intimate and obvious. In Genesis, we read that God formed the first human creature from the earth, blowing the breath of life into the nostrils of its clay body, turning it into a living being. We are creatures of the earth, fragile earthen vessels that nonetheless live in a world of wonder.

Charles McCollough and Rosemarie Schiller are two artists whose work embodies the fragility and wonder of human life. While both work with the figure, both work at about the same scale, and both work in clay, their approaches, their materials, and their backgrounds are very different.

McCollough studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Johnson Atelier, and Mercer College, and is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, with a PhD in theology from Drew University. His career as minister, activist, author, and teacher has informed his work as an artist. His terra cotta narrative scenes draw on the parables of Jesus for inspiration, inviting the viewer into the story through the emotions of the characters.

Schiller’s more abstract reflections on the human condition place smoke-fired clay figures in ambiguous situations in relationship to one another and to the world around them. She studied art at the Atelier du Midi, in St. Jean de Buèges, France; with Arno Stern at the Education Créatrice, Paris; at the Instituto Allende, in San Miguel Allende, Mexico; and at the Art Students League, in New York. Her work has been exhibited in Switzerland and New York City, and is held in private and corporate collections in Europe and the USA.

What both these artists have in common is an awareness of the fragile strength of human life. In Schiller’s “Constellation V,” blocky forms hint at the figure beneath, releasing only a wordlessly singing face, thrown back to confront the sky. The delicate spinal column and wiry muscles of McCollough’s “Prodigal” support him even in his weakness, as he gazes mournfully at his piggish companion. In both, the solidity of the clay bodies testifies to an unbroken connection with the earth from which they came.

Deborah Sokolove
Curator, Dadian Gallery

Rosemarie Schiller

My latest works of smoke-fired clay figures have been assembled into archaic scenes. I’m exploring the fragility of life, its night and shadow aspects, invisible connections, human connectedness and disconnectedness.

Working from an inner space of silence, life is experienced as constant transformation in the passing flow of time. Having been thrown into this world eons ago – “alone with others/with others alone” – we are held by a thin thread: the fragile thread of the unique life that we are weaving day after day. Life presents a series of encounters (or non-encounters) with other “weavers of the thread.”

Numerous trips to Central America, and a decade of summers spent in the wilderness of the hot and arid desert of Baja California Sur (Mexico) have left the strongest imprint on me. Life in congested New York City for the past twenty years seems like an existence on another planet, yet both environments are part of one earth: Survival in the extremes of metropolis and desert (congestion of human life or the complete absence of it) both push you to the very limits of being and transform you permanently.
 

Charles McCollough

I have selected a few sculptures from a group of forty I have made for a book on the parables of Jesus. The images in clay seek to embody the core of the parables’ meanings. The figures are in-the-round and in relief. The reliefs have two sides which carry forward the narrative of the parables. For example, the Samaritan story is in both three dimensions and relief. I wanted to stress the point of view of the beaten man (in three dimensions) with whom Jesus audience would more likely identify. Samaritans were hated by Jews, suggesting a “love your enemies” rather than a “do good” interpretation. The two critical points in the Prodigal narrative are his turning around in the pig pen and his return to his father’s embrace. The image of a rotund father almost smothering a starved son needs more than words to express.

I have found the visual and tactile medium of sculpture communicates on a level different from the literal. I hope the visual images stand on their own, but I encourage people to read the written texts in the synoptic Gospels and compare these visual versions to them.

Recognizing that the parables have many meanings, I nevertheless have used current biblical scholarship to reach interpretations that account for the political/economic contexts of Jesus’ time. For instance, the Corrupt Judge/Persistent Widow has the widow’s persistence expose the judge’s corruption than the Luke’s interpretation of her persistent prayer to God.

Occupied Palestine was part of the Roman empire which dominated everything and which finally murdered Jesus because he was a threat to that empire. I believe the parables speak directly to other political/economic issues of our time as well—a time in which politicians, as in ancient Rome, practice perpetual wars in order to maintain their power. The king goes to war without counting t he costs, vineyard workers protest manipulation by the boss, five women dance in God’s celebration for they were ready with oiled lamps to hear the call to that other Empire, and servants care for God’s household whenever the Owner returns. Both the sculptural and the parabolic images seek to break the normalcy of empire in the first century and today. God’s Empire was Jesus’ seditious alternative in which a leavened loaf fed everybody; feasts included the poor, crippled, blind, and lame and strangers at midnight. God, like a shepherd or a woman seeking a lost coin, goes to extremes to bring us lost sheep and coins back to God’s alternative Empire.