Recovery from cancer surgery and a call for entry to a sculpture exhibition titled A Blessing of Animals brought to mind images of an event I had witnessed years before: the birth of a baby donkey. Motivated by the promise of my own renewal, I felt compelled to recreate what I had seen in clay.
The strange and poetic scene of a baby still partially wrapped in its afterbirth sac offered me rich design possibilities and thematic material. The qualities of the sac, like sheer drapery, led me to develop contrasting elements which, to my thinking, convey the idea of passage into the physical world: a smooth film next to wet, thick fur; a veiled eye opposite a wide open eye; tightly bound rear legs behind wobbly, free forelegs. The baby’s fragile body and veil seemed angelic, not fully corporeal, not yet fully of the earth.
