Mind Conjures Body Manifests
a juried members' show with juror Miriam Martincic

May 15 - June 23, 2006

Feet
Miriam Martincic

“Not that only”

—T. S. Elliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton

“I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”

—Walt Whitman

I work with the body as a sculptor, draftsman, student of anatomy, and yoga
practitioner. My craftsmanship is an homage to precision, but I aspire to great facility coupled with even greater restraint. I love the specificity of minimalism, the ability of a poem to clearly express the failings of language through a few words. And I contradict myself.

When precision and finish become too important, I sever forms or break edges.
When beauty becomes automatic, I am drawn to the awkward. After I have declared my love of the body’s complexity, I simplify it. I desire strength, but show
vulnerability. The work is serious, then playful; self-pitying, then comic.

This is a process of addition, not subtraction. Not one perception replacing another, but the two side by side. I juxtapose form and approach both within and among pieces. The point of multiplicity is not to create chaos, but to offer numerous views— an emotional cubism that represents the truth of experience as “not that only.”

-Miriam Martincic