Raconteuse
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"Raconteuse" life-sized 35”x 24”x 30”, fired clay
When my husband Colin and I first started meeting each other's friends, I noticed how we both seemed to tell mostly the same stories about ourselves to each new person we met. Most of the tales were not those of derring-do, but simple day-to-day happenings. These point of these stories often seemed more tied in to saying something about ourselves, how we saw the world or defining moments wherein we came to develop some aspect of our philosophy about life.
"Raconteuse," a teller of stories, is a chronology of anecdotes from my life that in some way have defined how I see myself or are significant to my experience of identity. The approximately 4200 words covering her begin on her face with a poem by Walt Whitman that I've carried with me since my university days:
“A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly, musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.”
Raconteuse symbolizes continually seeking, then finding one's path in life. The words form a continuous pattern and texture over her surface in the same way that the stories we frequently tell about our lives form the pattern of how we see ourselves and wish others to see us.
"Raconteuse," a teller of stories, is a chronology of anecdotes from my life that in some way have defined how I see myself or are significant to my experience of identity. The approximately 4200 words covering her begin on her face with a poem by Walt Whitman that I've carried with me since my university days:
“A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly, musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.”
Raconteuse symbolizes continually seeking, then finding one's path in life. The words form a continuous pattern and texture over her surface in the same way that the stories we frequently tell about our lives form the pattern of how we see ourselves and wish others to see us.