People that have seen this body of work have asked how these hollow heads are made. Without giving away my most treasured secrets, it is possible to articulate the process of how they are made on a mechanical level, that part is straightforward and doesn’t have many secrets.

      Using various kinds of screen and wire mesh of both differing gauges and material, (copper, brass, aluminum) the piece is formed over a plaster matrix. Depending on what my intentions may be, the mesh is cut, stitched, patched, pressed, coiled, folded and layered until the different pieces come together and there is a satisfactory result. The word "satisfactory" implies for me a "rightness" in both technical and aesthetic terms. But there must also be present at this stage, a character that has emerged with at least a promising identity.

      This part of the cycle can take quite some time because I often prefer to work from the inside out, without a completely preconceived notion of where I am going. I like to call this "working in the dark". Since I try to remain open and listen to what's going on in the piece but also stay tuned in to the materials, it is mostly about the dialogue between technique and content. I need to look again and again and continue to reform the face until a set of distinct features comes across that somehow speaks to me. This dialogue can take the form of a song, a tug of war, an argument, a debate or an effortless flow of images and associations, usually a combination of these.

      I will often use several layers of different kinds of mesh, particularly in the area of the face itself. Sometimes poking many tiny pinholes in one of the layers to let that "skin" become even more porous and allow light through or intentionally fragmenting that interior face and re-stitching it. These damaged or "less than perfect" surfaces appeal to me because they help give the piece a sense of having had experiences and a history, of having had a life before we ever met.

      All along, there’s a continual shaping and re-shaping because the stitching and synthesis of materials is sometimes very hard on the facial features. It blurs the identity that needs to be restored. The rest is about learning to recognize who this particular character is and what is its potential.

      I am very attracted to the lightness of these materials and their skin-like quality. They are also forgiving and are willing to improvise with me, the elasticity of the mesh and wire allowsfor experimentation before final decisions need to be made. Because they are hollow, one can see through them. Each piece seems to have its own way of asking for a different kind of attention. I find the empty space that the mesh embraces to somehow be a deeply moving void, a touch of "nothingness" in a world of "thing-ness".

Karen Bamonte
Campello, Italy
October 2004