Faculty Mentor: Professor Larry Millard
Sculpture
Lamar Dodd School of Art
University of
Georgia
Don't let the seven-foot-tall, pro-basketball-player sized wombs hanging from the ceiling give you the wrong impression. Teresa Sporer is not interested in confinement or safety. Her deliciously conflicting creations draw from many different categories of modern art, including sculpture, ceramics, and fabric design; the result is a gutsy exploration of contrasting materials and techniques that flirts with multiple divisions of traditional art.
Teresa once specialized in ceramics, but felt that clay was inadequate to describe themes like marriage, childbirth and venomous snakes. She was also beginning to experiment, using her ceramics-derived techniques to exploit the versatility of sculpture and the softness of fabric. "I was starting to work on the idea of the body as a container," she begins, and points out the organic and evocative overlay enclosing the hard hidden skeletons. "I wanted the fabric to hug the steel."
Did she mention that these fey forms are also environment-friendly? "If I can recycle it, that's what I'll do," she says, gesturing to a large piece of steel she rescued, rewelded and reused when a professor had started to discard it. She is explaining to me that many of her creations are crafted from similar found objects when Charles Warnock, a fellow student, interjects playfully over her shoulder, "She just kept stealing things!" She may use recycled materials, but her energy and élan are entirely fresh.
Click on the image to view a high resolution version of the work.
