No. 52: GEORGIA HENKEL - AXIS MUNDI
release date: April 15, 2025
release date: April 15, 2025
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ARTIST STATEMENT: On road trips, whoever rode "shotgun" was assigned the task of tallying roadkill. Those tallies - scribbled on receipts, candy wrappers, or whatever trash was handy - included special categories: UIM (Unidentified Mammal), and UIB (Unidentified Bird). Some of these records are tucked away in the bull bag on "Sapper Love's" stick. My children grew up with the understanding that boxes in the freezer did not always contain what the label claimed.
Seeing faces in inanimate objects is not unusual - there's even a word for it: pareidolia. The architecture of skeletal systems is a pareidolia's manna from the upper realm of the Axis Mundi - sacred and perfect, smelly and fragile. The symmetry, intricacies, and lingering energy of what remains from a lived life resonate deeply.
All the organic materials in these tableaus are from a lifetime of treasure-hunting, I knew that someday I would find a purpose for all of the bones, skins, and flotsam, as well as the slice of potato with a chunk of my daughter's finger on it from a Thanksgiving mandolin mishap and the footlong hairball (with toothpaste cap and Barbie shoe) that clogged up the shower in 1996.
I'm still that kid who comes home with frogs in her pockets - except mine are usually dead. Animals that are dead, whether on the road, in the woods, or in my walls have always saddened me enough to pause and silently honor their lives. I collect their bones if the decay is far enough along... and sometime when it isn't.
Transforming rigid body parts and other detritus into tableaus that evoke humor, terror, desire, and empathy serves as a means to further celebrate and pay tribute to the complexities and histories of discarded lives.
Georgia Henkel lives and works in Lexington, KY. She is recently retired from a 35-year teaching career and continues exploring the natural world with awe and honor. Her work calls attention to the awkward inner states of humanity through an exploration of materials, anomalous figures and uncanny circumstances.
Seeing faces in inanimate objects is not unusual - there's even a word for it: pareidolia. The architecture of skeletal systems is a pareidolia's manna from the upper realm of the Axis Mundi - sacred and perfect, smelly and fragile. The symmetry, intricacies, and lingering energy of what remains from a lived life resonate deeply.
All the organic materials in these tableaus are from a lifetime of treasure-hunting, I knew that someday I would find a purpose for all of the bones, skins, and flotsam, as well as the slice of potato with a chunk of my daughter's finger on it from a Thanksgiving mandolin mishap and the footlong hairball (with toothpaste cap and Barbie shoe) that clogged up the shower in 1996.
I'm still that kid who comes home with frogs in her pockets - except mine are usually dead. Animals that are dead, whether on the road, in the woods, or in my walls have always saddened me enough to pause and silently honor their lives. I collect their bones if the decay is far enough along... and sometime when it isn't.
Transforming rigid body parts and other detritus into tableaus that evoke humor, terror, desire, and empathy serves as a means to further celebrate and pay tribute to the complexities and histories of discarded lives.
Georgia Henkel lives and works in Lexington, KY. She is recently retired from a 35-year teaching career and continues exploring the natural world with awe and honor. Her work calls attention to the awkward inner states of humanity through an exploration of materials, anomalous figures and uncanny circumstances.
SOME IMAGES OF GEORGIA HENKEL'S WORK CURRENT ON SHOW AT THE ART LEAGUE IN THE EXHIBITION AXIS MUNDI
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