Saturday, November 18, 2006

Fertile

When I worked in stained glass 20 years ago, I made a piece using only clear and white glass, based on a phallic design. Once I had stylized to phallus I realized that by adding a small mound between the legs and exaggerating some of the features, I could make the phallus also look like a sitting fat lady. I had only a photograph of the original piece, which even then is broken. One of the challenges was painting enough different styles of textured glass to keep the piece interesting. The dark lines are the same lead lines used to join the original pieces of glass. The original photo was taken with the glasswork against a window with green fields in the background. I decided to stick with this as the “Fat Lady” had become, with her phallic overtones, a definite fertility symbol. The green and blue of outdoors should be her colours. Some reactions can be disconcerting, like the woman who asked if the picture was obscene. Why? She thought if represented ovaries. Strange. Could be. She got the context anyway.

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