Well-Tempered- Helen Hierta
$20,000.00
Well-Tempered
The Well Tempered totems are made from a range of low fire to high fire white and dark clays, electric, gas, or wood fired with a variety of glazes and stains.
Individual totems are 6’-7’ tall, stand on a painted wood base 12” x 12”, and when grouped together are 84” x 24” x 48”.
The 8 Totems are sold together
Complimentary, LOCAL Delivery and Installation
Delivery and Installation can be arranged outside of our local area , please inquire
The working, shaping, glazing and firing of the clay is a purposeful parallel to processes by which decades of life have rendered a personhood carved and consummated by time. Unlike a self portrait that captures a moment, this group seeks to reflect the sum total of the artist’s personal evolution through its depiction of individual iterations of the self, each totem existing as a necessary component of the expressive whole. As an exposition of the in-progress self, both the finished piece and its creation serve as meditations in vulnerability.
At the deeper core of this sense of vulnerability is the artist’s acknowledgement of distance from the art world as a self-taught septuagenarian and relative newcomer to the field. Her attention has been on the metaphysical, the Kundalini energy moving through the chakras, the meditations that bring the invisible into the visible realm, and she hopes that through this self-expression in a space which is missing voices like hers, she might also embolden other overlooked voices to feel worthy.
