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| "The Queen Tells Lies" 27" tall Raku, mixed |
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| available |
I have a bad temper. Sometimes if I have a confrontation with
a person I go and make art in order to exorcize the anger and it usually helps me to let it go. " The Queen Tells Lies"
evolved from such an experience. The copper glaze on the back of her cave came out just the way I feel when I lose my temper.
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Clay is the perfect medium for sculpture. Combined with wood, fabric and metal, it takes on many of their
qualities while retaining the mark of the artist's hand. |
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I find things lying around junk yards and hardware stores, or out in the
woods. Then these things tell me to build a clay piece to live with them and make them into art. Or sometimes
I will build the clay piece and it just isn't finished for some reason, so I will keep it around the studio awhile until just
the right materials come to make it complete. The security team at Home Depot probably thinks I am crazy, as I can spend
hours in there arranging parts and odds and ends in the bottom of my cart. Note the legs on "Robotic!" | | | |
| "Robotic" 22" tall Raku and aluminum |
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| Collection of Doug Levine - Spring Texas, USA |
| "The Hitch" 30" Raku & leather upholstered wood |
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| sold |
The Hitch is the three dimensional piece resulting
from a series of drawings of hands. I am fascinated by the people on the fringes of society, like hitchhikers, and how
their bodies signal their responses to life. The Americans stick out their thumb when they need a ride. It is like a
symbol of hope and faith in fellow travelers that they will be offered help. The small key fobs on each side of the hand have
imprinted "Pray" and "Play". These represent the chance we take when we interact with a stranger. The leather bonds
that support the plaque also bind the hand to the wall piece. This represents our bondage to our past ways of doing things
and to society's expectations.
| "Copper and Rust" mixed media 27" tall |
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| collection of Arnold and Laura Reichert, Alabama USA |
The base of "Copper and Rust" is a piece of rusted expanded construction mesh
that was lying against the wall at my clay supplier's place in Baton Rouge! I had taken a weaving class from my friend Linda
Sura, so I spent several hours weaving the copper wire through the base to support the clay piece. The square cage that makes
up the base is representative of the whole theme of the round peg/ square (w)hole series. I think I have dealt with most of
the power of that cage.
"Flown Away" was inspired by a bird nest that Dennis DeBautte
gave me. Linda Sura gave me the driftwood and inspired me to weave the wire sling that supports the stoneware vase. One
of my sons has left the nest so far, and I think about the time when my youngest flies away..... he is in college now but
I still get to see him most weekends.
| "Flown Away" 27" tall Stoneware, driftwood, nest |
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*****
Nancy Rhodes, art reporter for the Times-Picayune, commenting
on the "Show Me Your Notes" show at the Slidell Cultural Center in 2001:
"Another standout is a small mixed media sculpture by Zahidi Neale of Slidell. This piece
titled 'Nothing to Receive' seems to suggest a device for listening, possibly to the heavens, but the device is not hearing
anything. DeBautte [curator] said that the enigmatic nature of this work makes you look at it a lot harder and read more into
it than may at first come to mind."
| "Nothing to Receive" 15" Raku, various metals |
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| NFS |
The Shabd is the transcendent power which is believed to be the creative and sustaining force of the universe. It is
also known as the "Audible Life Stream", the "Music of the Spheres", the Sound Current, or God. All the religions mention
it by different names. In the Bible it is called the Word; "In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God
and the Word was God."
Prayer is talking to God. Meditation is listening to all He/She says. Meditating with the Sound Current brings us closer
to our ultimate reality, or truth. In meditation the soul will experience this
"Audible Life Force" as inner-light and inner-sound, and tune itself to it, to God: to become one with God's will. But if
the internal receiver is not developed and maintained the Sound remains unheard.
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