Ocean Bodies, a solo exhibition by artist Kimberly Callas, explores the interconnected relationship between humanity and the ocean, featuring life-sized sculptures and large-scale drawings that evoke ecological consciousness and the climate crisis.
These works were are hand painted 3D prints or cast in Winterstone. The 3D prints were featured in “Post-Human: New Media Art 2020” , edited by Leejin Kim and published by CICA press in Gimpo, Korea.
Here is the artist statement included in the book:
I long for an ecological self, a place within us that still remembers we are nature. As a sculptor, I take the body and write into it with nature’s patterns, symbols, and sometimes, prayers. I combine the body with the bee, the mountain, and the flower. As an artist, I work with the body as a place of knowing and I rely on the body as part of the land, the piece of land we always inhabit. The body becomes a place of transformation. If this longing is to be fulfilled, it will come through a spiritual changing of the flesh.
‘Your healing grows outside your door’, I learned from herbalists while working at a sustainability institute. I am intrigued by this magical concept that healing plants grow next to the person that needs them. It speaks of an ecological intimacy that I want to share through my artwork. My new eco-portrait series focuses on the healing power of herbs and other elements of nature. The eco-portrait, Yarrow’s 2nd Sight, is based on the British folkloric belief that pressing yarrow leaf against the eyes gives second sight.
The Eco-Portrait, Root Mouth, started as a 3D scan of one of my youth collaborators. Part of this series combines individual portraits with universal nature symbols and patterns. By joining the personal and universal I want to reveal our kinship with one another and nature. I work between a likeness and abstraction to also emphasize the tension between the personal and the universal – our desire to hold onto our uniqueness with our need to understand ourselves as a vast, interconnected body. This mask uses the symbol of the root combined with the mouth to represent speaking from a deep, tangled place.
The calendula flower is called ‘The Bride of the Sun’ for the way it follows the sun throughout the day like a sunflower. Part of the year, I live in a solar powered house that I built with my husband in Maine. This is one of the reasons Calendula is a major part of my ecological-self apothecary. I used it in my series Four Gates and Guards and it was the flower that began my Circle series. It continues to inspire images and patterns within my artwork. In the Eco-Portrait, Inner Flower, I use a circle pattern discovered in the flower’s center.
The Eco-Portrait, Honey-Eyed, continues this theme. It recalls how honey is used for healing and bringing spiritual insight through the ‘sweet speech’ of prophecy.
For my next series, I’m creating several life-sized figures that become palimpsests of land and seascapes. I’m exploring questions about ‘Embodied Place’ and how place ‘marks us’. This new work considers how our bodies are made up of and hold the memories of the very places we inhabit or have inhabited. What of nature’s patterns remain in us? What memories of home may I bring back to the surface and make visible again? My intent is to remember the ecological self, our significant connections to nature, while also developing meaningful new ones.
Sidereal: Again, to Navigate by Stars - Monmouth Arts Exhibit
