Succulent I
Susan Moffatt
Chapel Hill, NC
Marble on granite, steel
Artist Comments
The driving impulse of my work is a desire to capture perishable organic forms in stone. Often we come across small details – an emerging bud, a piece of fluted coral, a seed pod that dried in a surprising way, the depths of a flower calyx – and find them exquisitely beautiful. I want to preserve these finds in a way that magnifies their beauty. My aim is to reduce the form to its bare essentials so that the work tends towards abstraction while retaining is organic quality. Recently, it is cactus plants that have garnered my attention; they are ripe with sculptural possibilities. I am struck by their wide variety of forms and their capacity for monumentality. Their fleshy surfaces can give them an anthropomorphic quality which appeals to me. Succulent I is the first in a series of cacti sculptures. It was inspired by a plant I spotted that had geometric elements; I was intrigued by the way the square base transitioned into a triangular top through a series of ribs and twists. The resulting sculpture illustrates that geometry but also has allusions to the human figure.
-Susan Moffatt