Janice Kluge

“The Circle of Life”

These pieces were made during Covid. I began focusing on our deteriorating environment- both the physical ecology and social malcontent. I created pieces about birds and bees such as, “Canary in a Coal Mine” and “What the Bees Said”- as so many species were becoming endangered or completely extinct. As the world shut down for a month the air quality amazingly cleared all around the world. But that was only temporary. The departing administration was lifting most environmental protection including reversing bird protection.

The nude figures emerged when I was given some extruded clay tubes. The female nude figures became a metaphor for the vulnerability of going back out into the world during and after a quarantine. As in “Reaching Out” and “Sleeping Figure”, these figures are symbolic of containers that hold our emotions. Our homes became our shelters and our fortresses.

While working on the anagama kiln fired sculptures, the war in Ukraine broke out. On the radio and social media- images flashed of the homes of innocent people being bombed and the displacement of so many helpless individuals. It infiltrated my home and heart… and my sculptures. These collages of cast pieces were a spontaneous working of numerous parts, as in “A Safe Place to Fall”, and “It Takes a Village”. Much like the anagama kiln- one does not know what will happen until the door opens after a long firing.

My pieces reflect the transitions and often abrupt changes in the world along with the constant stability and tenderness of daily rituals. These personal and intimate figures use HOME as a metaphor for a nurturing retreat from the world. It can be the place where we hold our deepest emotions, thoughts, secrets, and dreams- within the mind, heart, and body- and share these intimacies with the people we LOVE.

Space One Eleven Involvement: Exhibiting Artist: Blue Angel: The Decline of Sexual Stereotypes in Post Feminist Sculpture 1988, Windows 1999, UpSouth 1999, Women with their Work III: Materiality 2018