The Birth Of PLeasure

2022

The Woman Of Wilendorf

The Birth of Pleasure was a series of slip cast replicas depicting the The Women of Willendorf; a Paleolithic figurine dated circa 28,000-25,000 BCE. The Wilendorf sculpture is the most well known of some 120 small portable figures that have been found and originaste from the same time period. The novelty of these mostly female figurines is their speculative purpose. Having no obvious utility like other artifacts of the same age or older it "has been suggested that she is a fertility figure, a good-luck totem, a mother goddess symbol, or an aphrodisiac made by men for the appreciation of men." The distinction that this relic and the others like it may have played an illusionary or celebratory role in the communities they originate from shows a shift in priorites of those people. The Woman of Wilednforf is the first and most prominent example of early civilizations begioning to look toward one another in a pursuit of hapiness. The Woman of Wilendorf may well mark the birth of pleasure.

The totems I made for this series were slip cast, raku fired and marked by draping human hair over their hot surfaces. The ceramic is then filled with expanding foam and mounted onto a steel rod. The concrete bases read "la naissa ce du plaisir" (the birth of pleasure.) My hope is that the people who now live with these works in their homes are reminded to see and seek pleasure in life.

The title of the work was drawn from a book with the same name The Birth Of Pleasure by Carol Gilligan.