Adelaide Paul
Adelaide Paul is a ceramics artist who uses mixed media in
her work to emphasize the ideas and statements her clay forms are making. Paul’s
ceramic work deals primarily with the relations between human and animal, and
how even animals we don’t usually eat -like horses and dogs- are consumed by
us. “In its extremes, American Culture posits an alternately cloyingly
sentimental and brutally callous relationship between humans and both
domesticated and wild animals. Animals are anthropomorphized in film, fiction
and popular culture. They (and their requisite accessories) are hot
commodities; like all commodities, they are also disposable.”
Her use of mixed media, specifically leather,
is crucial in making her ceramic figures further this point. Paul, who has a
background in anatomy, creates skin-tight leather body suits for her figures
that mimic the different parts of muscle underneath. This causes her figures to
look like three dimensional butcher cut charts. Paul also often sculpts ceramic
figures that are missing legs and other body parts, creating an idea of
helplessness or crippling.
Paul’s “Supraspinous” is a great
example of this idea of helplessness. In “Supraspinous” the horse figure
dangles, suspended in a glass container that looks like a serving dish. The
horse is clad in a red leather suit, which is constructed to show where the
muscle of the horse is underneath. The red of the leather also intensifies the
idea of meat. The horse figure itself is missing all of its legs, relying
completely on the anchors attached to its leather suit to keep it up.
Another of Paul’s work “Amore Cane”
deals with how humans abuse animals sexually by breeding them for our own
purposes. The female dog figure is posed in a submissive position with its
lower legs open, showing its belly. The dog’s face specifically shows fear,
with its eyes wide open and its ears back. The dog is clad in a pink leather
body suit, again emphasizing the meat underneath. However, because of the
color, placement, and lace at the neck of the body suit, the body suit also
creates the idea of sexual clothing, like lingerie.
