Snake Arm
Judy Chicago. Snake Arm, 2006.
Description:
Since 2000, Chicago has focused her creative energies in the medium of glass. "Snake Arm" (2006) is one in a series of glass pieces that premiered in November-December 2006 in the “Chicago in Glass” exhibition at Lewallen Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The series travels in September 2007 to the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery near Toronto for a two-month exhibition.
Many of the works in the exhibition focus on the expressive potential of the human hand. Through images realized in glass and in preparatory drawings, hands express a variety of emotions and states of mind as well as symbolizing human vulnerability and mortality. A recurrent motif is the use of contrasting hand gestures to illustrate the choices we make between reaching out and pushing away, between relationship building and rejection or aggression.
"Snake Arm" (2006) combines a raised fist, iconic symbol of power and revolution, with an encircling snake, archetypal symbol of the feminine, of the creator-goddess, of fertility and of medicine; it is an image that in a different way depicts a healthy balancing or fusion of power and creativity.
Chicago’s recent work in glass has been created in collaboration with Lhotsky glass foundry in the Czech Republic and Dobbins Studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Medium:
Sculpture
Tags:
goddess worship, goddess, hand gestures, hands, glass, sculpture, goddesses
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