melissa shook

About Clay

“Clay” is an installation of 1,000 clay female figures, 2”-6” tall, each unique, many glazed. The installation includes a grid of six self-portraits of my aging torso pulled and pressed as though it were made of clay.

The figures would be arranged in loose groupings, allowing the viewer to recognize the sheer mass and also to examine individual pieces. The different tones of clay and hues of glaze suggest the varied cultural histories that flow within and around us. The photographs are digital prints and the size will depend on the venue. They might be small, and placed unobtrusively in relation to the clay figures, as though this aging human body is but a minor part of the continuum. Or they might be printed with far more contrast, in a larger format that abstracts them, so that the visual connection is with the flow of humanity rather than to the individual components.

I still remember the remarkable experience of seeing the Venus of Willendorf at the Museum of Natural History, in New York, in the 1970’s. It was shown in one of the first blockbuster exhibits and I followed the crowd into a darkened room, slowly moving toward glass cases illuminated by spotlights. It was amazing to finally come upon this tiny, unassuming figure. I instinctively took a picture of her before the guard informed me that no photographing was allowed.

From those days until very recently, I was a documentary photographer. I photographed her daughter’s life for eighteen years and did portraits and interviews with women who were homeless in Boston, Cleveland and Phoenix; I recorded the last three years of my father and step-mother’s life after he had a stroke. Over the years, I have had numerous exhibitions of my work, and received a number of grants including a Visual Arts award from the National Endowment.

A few years ago, I began imagining that when I get very old, I would fashion hundreds of small female figures as homage to all the clay, wood, metal and stone figures that I’ve seen in countless visits to museums over the years. I had no clear vision about how I would make them, and never imagined that when I was 65, retired from teaching photography full-time, I would actually begin this adventure. When I joined a clay studio in late September of 2004, I had never worked with that medium and never imagined that this installation would evolve. I was simply committed to exploration.

Looking back, I see that making this work has replicated the way I began my life as a photographer. My father had given me a camera as a high-school graduation present. I had no aspirations to become a photographer, knew nothing about the skills involved in developing film and printing. When my daughter, Krissy, was born, I started taking pictures of her tiny self, her father and the loft on the Bowery where we lived. It took four years for me to understand that I was making these obsessive images because, after my mother died when I was twelve, I lost almost all my memory of my childhood, including all sense of what she’d been like. Only the black-and-white images in the family album showed me what she’d looked like. I was photographing to hold onto my daughter’s present, to leave a record for her future.

It’s probable that “Clay,” in some way, ties into that impulse to recover the unremembered mother. But there is no direct connection.

Each figure is imperfect; each is unique.