Notes from the Artist -Sara Jane Cagle '04 Gray
One day last summer, I picked up a handful of wet clay and scrawled out the word truth on the wall of my studio. I was hungry for vision; for an understanding that could take me beyond the comfortable and familiar, into the realm of meaning and truth. I wanted to know and to tell the truth about the model's body...about her being, and ultimately about the One who made her.
We read in Scripture that the first human beings were made out of the dust; were given shape and form and finally breath, so that they did not belong to the dust, but to the Lord their maker. I began to look, and then to wonder at this beautiful work of God's hands: the human body. I am absolutely captivated by all the contrasts and subtleties that come together to form the body: power and frailty, grace and awkwardness, sensitivity and callousness. There is a great artistry in the way the steely coiled muscle of a thigh gives way, suddenly and yet gracefully, to the vulnerable hollow just inside a hip bone. The different parts are in contrast, and sometimes in seeming contradiction, and yet they are brought together to form a complex, unified, and beautiful whole. And this body, which is at once beautiful and weak, is God's craftsmanship, and no part is made bad or ugly or shameful.
Seen in this way, with an appreciation of its complex unity, the human body may be understood as a metaphor for the whole of the human being. It is something I think about frequently when I have a model in front of me...as I seek to relate not only to her body, but to all of her person. I long to give viewers the opportunity to see her fullness and presence as a human being, and to recognize that, within the context of genuine relationship, no person can be reduced to a mere object of satisfaction.
Each time I shape a piece of clay in my hands, I hope to participate in this small act of both creation and redemption: the rediscovery of forgotten value and beauty. The unformed clay is a dull and heavy and insignificant substance, but it has the potential to be molded into graceful, nuanced form. Likewise, the body has suffered greatly under the objectifying hand of popular advertising and entertainment, but it still bears it's makers design, and has the potential to speak powerfully to the worth of every human being. And I, the artist, am the weakest and most corrupted of these, constantly tempted toward cheating and presumption. Sometimes I give in to that temptation. But even then, clay is a forgiving thing, and once I have stumbled back in the direction of truth, my mistakes may be corrected and my foolishness redeemed.
Sarah Jane
April, 2004
Notes:
1. Genesis 2:7 "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."
2. I am reminded of Paul's powerful description of the church in Romans chapter twelve: "For as we have many member in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." I Corinthians chapter twelve also contains a beautiful passage on the relationship between the human body and the nature of the church. It seems that unless we as believers come to appreciate the beauty and diversity of the human body, we cannot fully understand the diversity and unity that we share as members together in the body of Christ.
Works Exhibited:
1. Thoughtful
2. Looking!
3. Looking II
4. Escape
5. The Repose
6. The Response (which was broken and then replaced by The Pounce)
7. Burdened (on permanent display in the Asbury College Center for Counseling)