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Candice Ivy's Hummm is the embodiment of transformation made through labor-intensive and ritualized process. Her monumental sculpture made of wood, glass and porcelain gives form to trauma and spiritual transformation.
Ivy's multimedia practice has explored landscapes (and their particular physical distinctions and cultural resonances), storytelling, and more recently eco-feminism. Material transformation is integral to Ivy's sculpture, and the history of each material's formation and the elements that compose it are carefully considered by the artist. Hummm is composed of assembled glass windshields, layered over a wooden armature. A tower of porcelain forms--some in the shape of shells, others like stalagmites that reach towards the ceiling--create a temple-like structure. The glass is evocative of water in its transparency, permitting a view of the wooden structure beneath the skin of windshields. The cracks create a sense of movement and reveal the trauma that the glass holds. The tactility of the materials and their histories of transformation allow the viewer ample space for speculation.
Hummm debuted in After Spiritualism, a context that begs us to consider intangibles like the artist’s own body and its stories, the process of psychic transformation, or the residue of trauma that might be embedded in form. Hummm is an expression, an utterance that sends vibration through the body. It is not limited by language, and signals meditation or ritual. As part of the title, it underscores the changing relationships of bodies to environment, of our psyches to our physical form.
Ivy has described her piece as seeking to freeze and give shape to spiritual transformation. She ponders, "When does form come to possess presence? Presence suggests a kind of animation, or aliveness. It is the recognition of the reciprocity between material and body that awakens form." Ivy investigates the metaphors and stories held in materials, sensorial perception, and spirituality in many different forms."