Bio and images
Karen Akester is an uncommonly lively, cheerful sort of
person -- most unlikely to harbor a fascination with
morbidity, one might suppose. Nevertheless, the topic of
Akester's recent (December, 2002) Master of Design exhibition
at Edinburgh College of Art was Death. She researched the
ways various cultures choose to remember their dead and
related artifacts they produce. Although she studied many
death cults, including Mexican and Native American, British
Victorian funerary practices were particularly intriguing to
this Scottish 2003 Resident Fellow at the Creative Glass
Center of America. By recreating and re-engaging with
traditional death imagery, she obliquely addresses today's
more detached attitudes and finds a richer complexity of
meaning in this universal occasion for art-making.
Akester brings a sympathetic sensibility to bear on the
dichotomies intrinsic to the human condition. She notes that
some funerary iconography, including heavenly cherubs and
angels is comforting, while sinister elements, such as the
skull and crossbones, can be intended to drive "hell" or evil
away. A related theme which consistently interweaves with
Akester's exploration of death art, is a fascination with the
dark side of the human personality. Each human being, her
practice suggests, carries not only the seeds of death
within, but a hidden --or not so hidden -- potential for
evil.
For her master's exhibition, she cast images of children or
cherubs in "remembrance pieces." Their chubby faces often
resemble babies, though not the sweetly charming ones we
associate with Victorian art. Some heads sprout additional
smaller heads, perhaps resembling birds or animals, on long
necks like horns. These reveal alternate aspects of the
deceased's personality: "bad and good faces." "The 'bad'
face," she explains, "might represent the negative side of
the personality." But, like the skull on an old tombstone, it
might equally have the purpose of scaring away bad spirits.
Akester was excited to learn that a doll cemetery containing
the remains of three small dolls had recently been found in
Edinburgh. "They think it was made by a child, probably in
the late nineteenth century." Many of Akester's glass
sculptures are doll-like figures, a merging of
representations of angelic happiness, imp-like evil, and
depictions of the pathos of infant death, a pervasive 19th
century subject. The faces seem both authentically baby-like
and demonic. Above rounded cheeks, smooth pupil-less eyes,
some covered by inappropriate goggles, gaze at nothing. These
beings would seem perfectly, appealingly infantile if not for
their weird gleeful wide-eyed alertness. In addition, their
very numbers, crowded and jostled together, are threatening.
The dead outnumber the living.
Though she is still engaged by objects like Chinese ceramic
funerary figures and mummies, Akester is moving away from
static funerary art. "The figures I'm working on at the
moment are becoming more puppet-like," she says. She came to
CGCA with the intention of making dolls, some with
articulated limbs and joints which can be manipulated. She
has been thinking about using these in "a puppet dance which
will describe life and death." Many elements of this plan,
such as the costuming of the dolls (She's considering India
as a source) are as yet unresolved. Her eventual goal is to
manipulate the doll/puppets in performance or animated films.
At CGCA, Akester cast primarily with the lost wax process,
using extended firings and the inclusion of unusual elements,
such as recycled glass, to obtain variations in translucency,
like marbling. Wax transmits a high level of detail,
contrasting plump contours with crisply defined features.
Paradoxically, after casting, Akester prefers to do minimal
cold working. "I just take off the sharp edges." She views
chance distortions of casting as serendipitous elements of
the finished work. In addition to the wax heads, torsos and
limbs for casting, she modeled some heads in clay. These were
used for sand-casting mask-shapes in dichroic glass. The
dualistic nature of being is manifested through the dichroic
glass's shifting blue to violet color, which changes
dramatically depending on the angle of the light.
Akester works with many materials including clay and wood and
claims to have "hundreds of unfired pieces of clay" in her
home studio. One step toward theatrical enactment, will be
placing doll-like glass figures in vignettes or "little
situations or scenes." One planned subject relates to
"hyperactive kids and too many sweets." Heads modeled for
this project are all based on photographs of newborn babies.
Their eyes are squeezed shut and their mouths relaxed as if
sleeping; however, they don't seem entirely human. Often
their goblin-like ears are pointed or oddly squared-off.
Akester is basing some of the bodies for these heads, on a
doll she purchased in a local thrift shop, which she believes
was made in the 1970's. "I like it because it's so
distorted." The small torso -- disproportionately smaller
than the head -- has even smaller limbs with short wide feet
and thick wrists and ankles.
Considering her images of dead babies and newborn hyperactive
ones, Akester says, "In my mind it's all linked together.
When many people think of dying, they think of rebirth; so
the infants fit in with that. Many people think they're going
to come back. I enjoy thinking about that." Recalling, with a
laugh, people who try to have themselves preserved
cryogenically after death, she speculates about the "poorest
folk who can only preserve their heads," and adds "I find the
Asian cultures most interesting spiritually." She's intrigued
in the idea of karmic influences on future rebirths and the
parallels to the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory or
hell. "Death is not a grim subject," she insists. "I feel
I've got lots to say and visualize about it before I'm going
to move on."
