Learning How to Play Again (with Flubber)

At first glance, Shauna Merriman’s work appears rather grotesque and uncomfortable, but what else would you expect from a body of work inspired by adipose tissue, skin and cervixes? Her sculpture is reminiscent of Flubber, the organic blob-like substance featured in the Disney movie starring Robin Williams. This being said, her work is nothing if not intriguing and thought-provoking.

This past Wednesday, I joined students and faculty for a talk Merriman gave about her career and her show Peripheries, a series of ceramic sculptures and mixed media, which is currently on display in Cummings Art Center. Merriman was on campus as part of the Weissman Visiting Artist Program, which brings artists to campus for several days to give workshops, lectures or critiques.

First, she explained the process of making her art—something I was dying to understand, as many of her pieces look like the results of some surgery gone awry. Merriman uses only slabs and coils of clay to produce a basic clay structure, which is then fired. She builds up the surface using several different kinds of wax. She describes her process as “an additive one,” and strives to achieve a surface that looks like an extension of the initial form rather than a static coat of wax simply lying on top of the piece.

She began using wax in her work after spending three months at an art school in Dresden, Germany. During this time, she visited the Deutches Hygiene-Museum, which was created to educate the public about health, the human body and medicine. The museum features wax faces and full bodies riddled with disease and injury. Merriman’s attraction to wax is primarily driven by the way it plays with light and its ability to mimic skin in a way that is hard to achieve with other media. Some of her first works with wax were based on adipose tissue (body fat) and invite the viewer to consider their own body image.

Another one of her pieces, entitled The O’s of Character, consists of six different wax sculptures of cervixes, all different sizes, shapes and colors. She based this piece on diagram of cervixes she saw in Dresden that was once used to evaluate whether or not a woman was “normal.” How one is perceived by our society and our tendency to label people are prevalent themes in Merriman’s work.

Despite her rather abstract and static subject matter, Merriman herself was quite a character. She explained that her work for Peripheries was labor intensive and tedious so she made sure to spend time on smaller projects. This way, she could experiment and not feel pressured to create a complete work. As part of this “play time” she began inflating pig intestines with air, covering them in a variety of substances and twisting them to create strangely beautiful shapes. Perhaps this isn’t exactly how most of us would spend our free time, but I couldn’t help but enjoy Merriman’s uninhibited personality.

She went on to describe how she was “pissed off” when she tried to order a speculum (a device used to examine the cervix) from a drug company and they refused to let her buy one without a prescription. Because her work is largely influenced by human anatomy and body image, she was outraged by not having control of her own body, thus being prevented from using it as a tool in her work.

Although the focus of Merriman’s talk was about her art and her motivations, her presentation had powerful undertones of encouragement for all the students in the room. The last slide she showed was a list entitled Some Rules for Students and Teachers by John Cage. She explained that though a professor had given it to her a long time ago, it still holds significant meaning to her today. Among these ten rules, number nine summed up Merriman’s overall message: “Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.”

She talked about how she “had to teach [herself] how to play again,” because we lose the ability to do that as we get older. Everything becomes one big deadline and one more job to do. Art student or no, Merriman reminded everyone to slow down and make a little time for themselves. Many of us are beginning to get caught up in the craze of November, but if you’ve been working hard all week it’s okay to put down the pen and hang out with your friends, or catch up on that episode of Modern Family you missed. •

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