These five ceramic sculptures represent the early embryonic stages of the animal kingdom. Some similarities between each other are visible at the beginning, as they start developing their own unique characteristics reinforcing the idea that organisms evolved from a common ancestor.
My artistic intent is to make something meaningful that can make me understand the process of life. For this reason, I have created five pieces which involves a fish, amphibian, bird, reptile and a mammal. By creating such pieces which involves the metamorphosis of embryos in different stages of animals gives me the opportunity to evolve the process with clay. Clay has been used since early history of man kind for all sorts of purposes. One of them has been an artistic manner. It provides the unique characteristic that it can be molded and one can define the structure on to the desired shape.
Moreover, clay gives an earthy look to my pieces providing them with a more primitive look as the metamorphosis of the embryonic changes take place. I have used the space unconventionally. For instance, in the shape of the amphibian, I exaggerated in the front part by making the structure look more pronounced. Next I was also thinking about the scale of the piece. I wanted the proportion to be comparable to a 12” flower base as a metaphor for a mother wound. I also created an aperture on the top of the pieces as a simulacrum to the birth canal. I like to think that by comparing these shapes it can be used as a reference that all organisms evolved from the same ancestor. Finally, each one of my pieces has layers of earth tone colors which complements the piece by making it look part of earthy entity. Once again, in this Work, I am using the layers as a reference of millions of years of metamorphosis to distinguish specie similarities, including unique characteristics.
By: L.B. McKay
Amphibian
Bird
Mammal
Reptile
Fish
