Divine Archetypes

Ophelia by Photographer Ekaterina Belinskaya

my favorite bby bird

Skull Lady | Gerard Smith.

How to roll up your shirt sleeves

Beth Cavener Stichter (featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 16) caught our attention with her raw sculptural style. The artist forms animals by hollowing out blocks of clay, giving her subjects a raw, unrefined appearance as if they sprang from the material itself. In her latest body of work for her second solo show at Claire Oliver Gallery, “Come Undone,” Cavener Stichter refined her aesthetic, creating animal sculptures that are more stylized with deep grooves and glazed with different shades of gray — a departure from her minimally embellished work from the past. Take a look at a few images from “Come Undone,” which opens September 13 at Claire Oliver in New York City.

This astonishing sculpture forms part of Barcelona’s Poblenou Cemetery.  The Kiss of Death (El Petó de la Mort in Catalan and El beso de la muerte in Spanish) dates back to 1930. A winged skeleton bestows a kiss on the lips of a handsome young man: is it ecstasy on his face or resignation? Little wonder the sculpture elicits strong and varying responses from whoever gazes upon it.