I’m just crazy about antiquity!
Replication connects me with artificers of ancient times - their icons and marks, mythologies, their way of life, their cultural signature - through their hands, which made the artifacts which I copy. They and I are of the same flesh and blood; this I think about as I photocopy and trace, transfer and paint, the images and patterns which they - be they Scythians or Sumerians, Britons or Egyptian - conceived, and the ages between become at once awesome and insignificant.
In old Sumer, a court artisan fashioned with his hands an inlay for the soundbox of a harp. The artisan, the harpist, the entire court, died and were buried in the Royal Tomb, along with the harp and all the accoutrements of life in the palace. Five thousand years later, archeologists found what hadn’t long ago decayed, and with great care sought to conserve and preserve what they could. Now the beautiful piece lies in a glass case in a museum, and photographs can be bought in the museum shop.
My replications are changelings; they change from jewelry to plaque, from bas relief to painted cutout, from pierced ivory to pierced wood, they become something new. But always behind the act, behind the imitation of technique, the miming of the initial hand-work, behind the interpretation, is an unquestioning reverence for the integrity of the original, and a nostalgia for long-distant times and cultures.
Nine Men’s Morris, encaustic on
wood, 1997, 21" x 21"
The storming of the British Museum, where I started to combine my love
for ancient history and the growing understanding that Replication in
coloured wax was the way to do it and its artifacts justice. This piece,
much enlarged from its prototype (a ceramic pendant) shows Anubis and
the eye of Horus. Technique - an intricate stencil.