“I borrowed the perceived purity and moral innocence of the animal and imbued it with human complexity”.
Thus says the Californian sculptress Beth Cavener about the creation of her animal’s sculptures. The artist, by kneading the raw clay into metal structures, brings the emotions and human psychology through the rhythmic forms of animals. Sinuous shapes of cats, predators, foxes, goats and other animals in large size have the function of representing the intimate mood of fear, love, modern man’s anger. Beneath the surface, the sculptures embody our misunderstandings, apathy and aggressiveness.
Cavener writes, “The connections between art and science have always been at the center of my work“. Her mother, ceramist, forwarded her the manial language of transforming clay, the father, biologist, taught her to investigate the natural world around. Beth Cavener continued his studies in physics and astronomy in Pennsylvania, following his father’s footsteps in the scientific field, until she changed course by studying Fine Arts, earning a degree in sculpture.
Although she had studied the classical style at the art department o Haverford College, after a period spent at the Cecil Art Accademy in Florence, she passionate about the study of the surrealist movement and contemporary artists such as Francis Bacon.
Modeling with hard work his animals with chisels, hammers and rasps, Beth Cavener has learned to snatch a meaning in the subtle signs of clay as a metaphor, transforming those animals in human psychological portraits. In their gestures and expressions, we perceive a conscious gesture of invitation and a rebuke, simultaneously.
