Rona Pondick

Rona Pondick Sculptor

Quotes from http://bombmagazine.org/article/3351/rona-pondick

In arranging and curating the show, she selected a number of historic sculptures from different cultures—East and West, some dating back a few thousand years—from the museum’s collection to be shown alongside her own. This idea produced provocative juxtapositions, giving lucid insight into Rona’s working methods and interest in the fragmentation of the body and the more recent idiosyncratic hybridization of natural and animal forms with the human body, which she elucidates below.

Her work of 'human/animal' sculptures is what is being discussed here. I discovered her work from the tree sculptures, i m interested now also in her human animal sculptures. immedietly you can see evolution, talking about time and the evolution of mankind, it looks back to past times. i think its interesting that she chose to use these old historic sculptures with her work, these old sculptures also talk of metamorphises. god like creatures mixing humans and animals. the show looks back to a more primitave time from all over the world, but i think these times when these sculptures were made were not simple times they were full of religious wars and religious strife and famine and disease with a lack of medicine compared with now. however her sculptures to me speak of even earlier times, pre human, when humans are starting to become homosapiens from homoerectus.

RP If you look throughout history, what’s wonderful about art is that it’s mutating and spiraling. It doesn’t move in a linear way. We artists take things from maybe the last 100 or 1,000 years and twist them and re-do them, putting them into our own voices and time periods. In one section of the Worcester show I put a bronze Thai Buddha from the 15th–16th century next to my yellow stainless steel Dog that I finished in 2001 next to a Mexican ceramic from 900–1200 next to an Egyptian Middle Kingdom limestone from 2060–1780 B.C. I found it interesting that sculptures from different time periods and cultures—in many different materials, all made in different ways—looked like they made perfect sense together.

Is is a shame that photography doesnt have this kind of history? sort of, it could be argued that since photography has a relevence to painting that there are some ancestral links to look to. it can be argued that photography doesnt have anywhere near the timespan as scultputre or paintings, as these date back to cave paintings and ancient monuments, but now i think art has eveolved to a point where a succesful artist, a successful photographer should look at all forms of art, not just photography, therefore the 'ansestors' a photographer should have looks back a long time for some aspects of a project. However of course you cant draw inspiration for speaking about photography from what an artist did 1000 years ago as they couldnt have been trying to say anything abut photography.

RP The first time I merged a fragment of my own body with an animal form a light bulb went off. I realized that animal-human hybrids have existed since the Neolithic era, and if you look throughout history, it’s an image that has repeated over and over. Now, when you look at the way science is advancing with cloning and genetic manipulations in both human and plant forms, it’s chilling how it all comes together.

Sometimes it takes me a while to understand what I’m doing in a piece, psychologically. When I’m working on a sculpture I don’t always understand what I’m doing and it can take me years to understand fully what it means. But I’m definitely aware of the emotional interpretations. People want to believe there’s a narrative. Because I’m bringing contradictory fragments together, I believe the viewers try to bridge the gaps and wind up projecting a lot of themselves into my work.

RP I don’t think I’ve ever made a sculpture that’s not a fragment or made up of fragments. One way I engage the viewer is to show a part of something rather than the whole. The whole is complete. It makes sense. It’s logical. The viewer is more passively engaged.

i think its the same with photography, it has to have little traces and flavours of something, of some idea, or a message, but then if it tries to show the whole thing it becomes a little pointless.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/03/art/rona-pondick-with-phong-bui

http://www.ronapondick.com/press/ronapondick_AMA_2012.pdf

Her work is all about metamorphasis, taking one thing and changing it, whether through fragmentation, or losing its colour or morphing two things together. is this what i am trying to do, make a metamorphisis out of the natural world? maybe, i guess i see these plants that should belong in the natural world as already metamorphasised. so maybe i am trying to further the development. taking macro shot of them serves to make them further unreal, to further take them out of any sort of earthly context. i guess its all just absurd. these macro shots of flowers having any sort of significance to anything, they dont really pertain to anything anymore, they have been changed so far from where they have originally come, maybe that is my point about humanity, that we have come so far from any original humanism. all the religious and political divides just put everything into a negative light.