1. What made you want to participate in this project?
I liked the CONSENSES idea of mutual inspiration and collaboration between many different types of artists.
2. Without going back to the poem I sent you what do you remember about it?
A moving lament from a fragile and disillusioned individual, who is gradually broken under the stress of a one-sided and neglecting love relationship.
3.What was your first reaction to the poem? (thoughts, emotions, memories, tastes, smells etc?)
Increasing disillusionment, frustration.
4. If you had to choose one word to sum up the poem I sent what would it be?
Broken
5. What emotion did it elicit?
Sadness, empathy
6. What was the poem about in your mind? (Did it tell a story? Paint a picture? Etc.)
It was a concentrated narrative about an initially promising love story gone terribly wrong.
7. Take me through each step of your process from getting the poem to the creation of your work.
The poem gave the impression of a woman broken and “dismembered” both physically and emotionally through a destructive relationship. I thought of perhaps doing an abstract sculpture with limbs and joints dislocated, but decided to do broken and partly reconstructed doll instead.
8. What did you title your work and why?
I kept the title of the original poem, which has a beautiful literary quality to it, and also brilliantly sums up the entire content of the poem.
9. What part of your work came to you first?
I thought of a woman bending herself so much to appease and please her abusive partner that in the process she is eventually broken to pieces.
10. How do you normally create? How was this experience different?
I normally re-interpret classical themes, such as the Four Elements, The Five Senses, The Continents etc. to a new audience living in the 21st Century. Most often this is done by presenting well-known or forgotten ancient motifs as animal allegories with a modern twist. This is the first time I have interpreted a contemporary poem.
11. What techniques/tools did you use to help you express you’re interpretation?
The poem inspired me to sculpt a fragile and partly broken porcelain doll. I used one of my wife´s antique half-dolls for reference.
12. Are there certain choices you made which mean something specific to you that the observer might not know?
I sculpted a doll in clay, which is supposed to look like it has fallen to the ground and broken in a thousand pieces – and then subsequently been imperfectly glued and pieced together. In a later casting process this clay sculpture is cast first in wax and then in bronze, and finally patinated with white and yellow colors to imitate the surface of a real porcelain doll.
Extra credit: Did you enjoy this project? Is there more you want to say about your experience?
I enjoyed the project very much, and see it as an ambitious modern pendant to the Wagnerian “Gesamt-Kunstwerk”; a philosophy emphasizing the importance of letting numerous different art disciplines and artworks relate to each other and merge into one whole, bigger than all the parts.
