These are spreading figures from the soft wood of the Thuja tree.
26.11.1998
(excerpt)
by, Christine Peters
… the novelties: these are spreading figures made of the soft wood of the thuja tree.
Life trees have a dense root system, which is reduced to one twentieth with the saw.
Of the many shoots, four, three or two remain, which, when turned upside down, become the mainstays.
Six hours of bone work on the chainsaw in her studio in Michelstadt are the rule – “a feeling of happiness”.
Knotty, pointed, cracked, archaic-looking figures with a damaged surface are created.
When you think of the “flowers of evil”, their heads stretching to the light and embody the grace of terror.
The Thujen come from gardens or cemeteries.
Recently, the artist exhibited her cephalopods for the first time in the plant hall of Frankfurt’s main cemetery, on which she had worked for two years.
She does not have fear of contact at a place where death plays the leading role, she says, which has made “horror the creative motor”.
When the hall was set up, the coffins rolled past her:”I gave the dead the right of way.”
Her attitude is based on experience and is at the same time a legacy of her Silesian grandmother, who in the war defended house and farm and fled, fled, began anew in the West and exemplified to her granddaughter that fear can also be a driving force.
“In our family, the strong ones have always been the strong ones,”says the sculptor.
She calls “iron self-discipline” as the foundation of her inner stability, which she may have saved her life once and which is the engine of her art.
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