chantal pollier

Ephemerality, balancing the line between being and not being is definately one of my themes. Mummies, corpses and their siblings are my muses. The subject: decay and ultimately death. One day –15 years ago- I was crossing a road with my car. As I came back, 20 minutes later, a woman has died in that same street, hit by a truck. All I could see was a blanket over the body, leaving one foot free. I was in shock, suddenly realising how death can catch us in full life! This woman was probably a mother, wife, grandmother… just doing her shopping. It was after this event that I made my first series of sculptures about death people. When do you see when a person is no longer alive, how does the skin look, the eyes, the body? Why do we feel empathy for a mummy, and not for a skeleton? How long do we still feel empathy when a body is heavily deformed? ... These questions keep me going and are my inspiration for my figurative sculptures , mostly in stone (marble, alabaster, grey stone…) and/or wax. sculpt007 (born in 1965) graduated in Psycho-analysis and clinical consulting at the university of Ghent in 1990, and worked for 10 years as a psychotherapist in a centre for children with learning disabilities or/and socio-emotional problems. She also graduated in sculptural techniques at the KASK (Royal Academy of the Arts of Ghent) in 1991. Now working fulltime as a sculptor.

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		Anna Dibble over 2 years Thanks for your comments. The paintings with text are my latest series. I'll be doing a lot more of those in the next 6 months. 2 solo shows next summer. maybe sometime i'll take some pics of the quarries. ive wanted to do that for awhile. if i do it i'll send them to you.
		Anna Dibble over 2 years i love your work too. There's a place near where I live - the Carving Studio - in West Rutland, VT that's devoted to stone carving. It's set in an old marble quarry which is unbelievably beautiful... a lot of the mines have filled with water and the way the surrounding marble walls reflect in the water is remarkable. Once a year they have a Sculpfest in which sculptors make site specific work on the grounds, ujsuallly follwoing a theme.
		Don Dougan over 2 years Hey Chantal - That alabaster torso (on your W.I.P. blog) is beautiful with the stones inherent flaws used so effectively. A comment related to your chosen topic of the exploring the empathies for people's death: the first time I saw Magritte's "The Future of Statues" (with Napoleon's death mask) as actually installed in the gallery (Tate, London) I had shivers running up and down my spine. I had seen pictures of the piece in books before, but they never gave the installation details - just the close-up of the image itself - which missed the whole point of the piece. Magritte's combination of his signature imagery (clouds in a blue sky) combined with Napoleon's dead face (& thus all Napoleon stands for) and the position in the gallery (high up on the wall over the visitors' heads) becomes a a poignant statement about life/death, human ambition, modern art, and Western culture all rolled in together. Please add more images to your portfolio, the two are tantalizing . . .