Keith Edmier

Keith Edmier (b. 1967) locates the intersection of the personal and the public to create works that mine our shared memory and history. Beverly Edmier, 1967 (a Madonna-like image of the artist's mother, dressed as Jackie Kennedy, with the artist visible in embryo), and Farrah Fawcett (a marble sculpture of the actress) draw upon classical formalism and popular culture. Edmier's meditations on natural forms entangled with human interactions and interpretations have led to works such as Victoria Regia (Second Night Bloom) and Victoria Regia (First Night Bloom), delicate water lilies rendered very large scale in dental resin. His early experience as a fabricator of orthodontic appliances and later as a prosthetic special effects artist for Hollywood movies informs his exploration of new materials as well as his imagery.

Cycas revoluae bulbil

To make Cycas revoluae bulbil, Keith Edmier developed new techniques for pouring molten lava in collaboration with Graphicstudio's fabricators and University geologists. Basalt, the solid form of lava, was crushed, heated to the melting point, and poured around the form of a cycad plant, leaving a cavity with an impression of the cycad. A urethane resin cast of a cycad plant was hand painted and attached to the lava form. Edmier has been interested in making sculpture with molten rock from the earth's core for several years. In Hawaii, he investigated the phenomenon of lava tree molds, created when molten lava engulfs a live, wet tree, leaving a negative cavity or impression. The cycad is an ancient plant that has survived with few changes for millions of years. Although there are male and female cycads, the plant can reproduce asexually, by generating pups of the same sex as the parent. His plant sculptures address aspects of sexuality -- the male and female functions of reproduction, renewal and rebirth.

Fireweed

To create Fireweed, the artist dissected, cast, painted and reassembled plants he collected in the High Sierras. The flower petals are cast in dental acrylic. The sculpture was dusted with volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helens in Washington. Fireweed is an exceptionally colorful plant and grows from the sub-Arctic down to the Rocky Mountains and across the upper Midwest and down the Appalachians to Georgia. Each element of the sculpture represents a different stage of the plants reproductive development - one is female and one is male. The fireweed is one of the first plants to emerge after the landscape is incinerated by fire or volcanic eruption. This sculpture represents a body of work that “functions as a phoenix of sorts, a meditation on death and regeneration, sexuality, and the process of casting, itself.” (Edmier, 2003)

 

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Images of the artwork are jointly owned by the artist and Graphicstudio. Reproduction of any kind including electronic media must be expressly approved by Graphicstudio.