Beth Cavener Stitcher

The Four Humors: The Choleric

Stoneware, mixed media. 2010

Anywhere But Here

Stoneware, antique iron hook, dyed rope, wooden wall pedestal. 2010

i am no one

Stoneware, 2006.

Render

Stoneware, wooden peg. 2009

Husk

Stoneware, wooden box. 2009

all above images/information from http://www.followtheblackrabbit.com/

The Sentimental Question 

Stoneware with ceramic glaze. 2012

The White Hind (The Bride)

Stoneware-based mixed media sculpture, 2012

above images/information taken from http://www.claireoliver.com/artists.html?artist_no=47

Beth Cavener Stitcher was born in Pasadena, California, in 1972, to a molecular biologist and an art teacher. She at first intended to be a scientist like her father, and went to study physics and astronomy at  Haverford College in Pennsylvania. In her senior year, she switched her major to art and earned a BA in sculpture. She builds her massive pieces solid at first, sometimes with thousands of pounds of clay at a time, on steel armatures, and then cuts them into pieces and hollows them out, then reattaches them and cuts them apart again for kiln firing. Her work is based around human psychology, using a simple vocabulary of animals and color along with subtle, delicate nuances to create her poignantly human pieces.

I chose to write about Stitcher because her work is strikingly beautiful. The first piece I saw, A Question that Devours, struck a chord with me in its simplicity and tension. The softness of the surfaces of her pieces is remarkable to me - at once, I can imagine the soft fur that would be there were these animals real and the real, grating texture that the ceramic would have. The slight sexuality of her pieces too, put into animal form, makes her work more uncomfortable to look at than if they were human.