Body of Work: Art by Christina A. West
You're Welcome, Aqua resin, carpet, plywood
Sculptor and installation artist Christina A. West has a body of work that centres on the human form. In full-body sculptures and busts, Christina displays an obvious skill for detailed, realistic sculpture, then embellishes her works with moments of pure abstraction to create works that are quite contemporary while calling upon classical ideals for visual art.
Personal Icon (detail), ceramic, paint, gold leaf
I’m really impressed by Christina’s body sculptures. While the sizes of the figures vary between slightly larger than life, and slightly smaller, the level of detail on the figures always seems accurate to the point of being scientific. The bodies represented in Christina’s artworks are not overly polished or proportioned according to particular standards of beauty. Rather, these are “average,” “normal” figures, turned iconographic by the process of sculpting, painting, and decorating.
In our previous feature of Christina’s work we also mentioned the artist’s busts – interestingly, I find that in the artist’s busts, the actual body becomes less of a focus and more of a substrate for the abstract interventions that are then added.
