June 17-24, 2004

art

Beauty of the Beasts

Lizbeth Stewart, Striped Monkey with Leaves (2003-04), 13 1/2 by 15 1/2 by 22 inches, ceramic, glaze, underglaze and china paint.

Lizbeth Stewart's ceramic animals reach magical and mythical proportions.

by Susan Hagen

In her first one-person show in many years, Philadelphia artist Lizbeth Stewart has her colorful and dreamlike ceramic work — all made in the last year or so — presented by the Wexler Gallery and Helen Drutt Philadelphia in Wexler's main gallery. Stewart has developed a distinctive body of ceramic sculpture over the past 20-some years, consisting of tableaux of animals and props that weave together the real and the imaginary. Her work evokes pre-Columbian and Mexican folk art, and is teeming with animals that possess special powers as totemic guardians, mythical protectors and mysterious harbingers.

Stewart's symbolic and allegorical use of animal imagery is also evocative of popular porcelain animal figurines of the 18th and 19th centuries (especially Meissen ceramics) that represent scenes of animals engaged in human activities. But unlike the predictably charming miniaturization seen in traditional figurines, the scale of Stewart's juxtaposed animals and objects is either life-sized or oversized. She also investigates an "unnatural" context for animals, with the man-made environment around the work becoming part of the mise-en-scene. It's a simple strategy that turns the figurine idea inside out — and charges the space between and around the components with energy and ambiguity. All of the pieces are painstakingly hand-built, and then glazed with brilliant colors and painted with china paint. In her symbolic and enigmatic tableaux, Stewart clearly intends to set up a visual riddle and let viewers find their own solutions.

In one group of pieces Stewart combines oversized human body parts with one or more animals or objects. Feet is immediately visible on entering the gallery. Two large monochromatic human feet, cropped diagonally at the ankles, face the door and are surrounded by six small exotic birds. Brightly colored in different combinations of olive green, turquoise, carmine pink, emerald green and black, five of the birds peck indiscriminately and without any self-awareness at the ground and at the feet, while one seems to look up inquisitively at the viewer. In Hand & Lizzard (sic), a dark green, cream and turquoise striped lizard with tiny white teeth gently bites the tip of the index finger on a jumbo human hand, while in Hand with Flower a large hand grasps a huge rose with extraordinary tenderness. We are encouraged to vicariously experience nature through the senses, whether it's the gentle caressing touch of a rose or the harsh little nip of a lizard.

Many of the animals have a human aspect in their hands, faces and gestures — especially the four pieces that feature different species of monkey as their protagonist. This is not surprising, since Stewart uses herself as a model. With their sleek and generalized forms, the monkeys appear to be wearing tight-fitting little exercise suits. In Striped Monkey with Leaves she places a black-and-white striped monkey with bright red eyes and muzzle next to two large heart-shaped ceramic leaves. The monkey, positioned at eye level on a high pedestal, seems to be running along on all four feet, when it pauses. From the right point in space, it seems to be glaring into and right through the viewer. Conversely, Stewart has invested Monkey with Flower with a benevolent self-consciousness. This oversized black-and-chocolate-brown monkey is nearly human in scale and it sits, holding its large and wrinkly hands and feet pulled awkwardly inward, with the most uncanny resemblance to the human form. Its eyes are orange with brown irises and red rims, and it has an alert and complex expression. Nearby, mysteriously, there's a very large blue-violet poppy. With a different type of presence, Stewart's Sitting Dog and Standing Dog both have a loyal and protective stance that shelters a comical persona, complete with giant bug eyes and calligraphic fur marks.

In these beautifully made new pieces Stewart seems to delve deeper into the psychological, as she continues to explore the riddle of animals as multidimensional symbols and human surrogates.

LIZBETH STEWART Through June 26, Wexler Gallery, 201 N. Third St., 215-923-7030