Sculpting the uncanny
- Christina’s clay and glass pieces tell a spiritual story
- She compares her practice to detective work, rooted in enquiry
- Her sculptures often feature one figure inside another, with juxtaposed meanings
Christina Bothwell’s figurative sculptures give physical form to inner visions and out-of-body experiences. Trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she spent years working in ceramics before a 1999 workshop at the Corning Museum of Glass reshaped her practice. “In glass I found a material that could hold light,” she says. It is this quality Christina needed to convey the spiritual and mystical worlds she explores. Her pieces hold glass and clay in tension, the first evoking the otherworldly, the second the earthly. Coming full circle, the Corning Museum now holds Christina’s work, alongside major public collections in the USA, Europe and Asia.
INTERVIEW
I am mostly self taught, which was not easy. With ceramics, I had to hunt down the right kiln, learn how to programme it and source the proper tools. It was hard but the process was exhilarating. With glass, I took a workshop at Corning, followed by a scholarship to Pilchuck where I learned how to embed figures inside glass with Irene Frolic.
My process is multi-fold. I begin with the clay elements, which are fired and pit-fired to create depth. I then form the glass through wax and casting, often embedding a hidden figure within it. After firing and polishing, I assemble the elements and finish the piece with oil paint.
I am interested in incorporating additional materials into the sculpture and thinking about how to make pieces lighter and more suspended, getting them off the ground. I am experimenting with driftwood, tree roots and carved elements, and I would also like to learn to knit and find ways to fold that language into glass.
Sometimes I make a sculpture and then it leaves my studio and takes on a life of its own. A man who lost his son told me that the spirit-leaving-the-body pieces made him feel his son was at peace. A mortuary worker uses my sculptures to comfort parents grieving their children.
