Christina Bothwell – Translucent Bodies
Christina Bothwell is an American mixed media sculptor creating fantastic beings and strange creatures that inspire feelings ranging from fascination to morbid curiosity. Most often made from cast glass and clay, they are sometimes fitted out with found objects that serve as limbs and other body parts. The glass allows a soft light to radiate through the figure and reveal hidden treasures and imperfections within, but its material vulnerability also mirrors the vulnerability of the figures she depicts: little girls, infants, and small animals. A little bit magical and a little bit menacing, Bothwell’s intriguing sculptures invite the viewer to imagine their own narrative for her figures and to delight in their visual curiosity. There is an unsettling merging of both fragility and permanence throughout Christina’s work: tomb-like bodies forged in stone and glass, yet rendered vulnerable by their transparency. Christina states that her ideas are in many ways autobiographical; the pieces certainly arise from what is going on in her life, or what has gone on in her childhood. The essence of vulnerability is an underlying theme in her work. Originally trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she began teaching herself to work with clay in 1995. Her work with glass began in 1999 after taking a workshop in glass casting in Corning NY.
