Mary Claire Page

Stand In

This sculpture is a love-letter and eulogy to Page's past selves.

“Stand In" was born from the internal conflict of a reluctance to be vulnerable, while also having the desire to make connections and be known by others. Page is telling stories from their childhood without using words to articulate them. The stories are those of quietly enduring pain, being the "problem child", the only daughter, gender non-conformity, and generally being terrified of other people. The process of making “Stand In” was painful and very cathartic.The sculpture is a silhouette of a head and shoulders, on a much larger scale. It is approximately five by three feet tall. The purpose of the large size was to take up a similar amount of space as a person, drawing attention away from my own body. The form is covered in a variety of different stuffed objects, inspired by the various dolls and objects adults give to children for comfort. I wanted to make my own comfort objects to become vessels for the memories I was exploring. The objects are attached to the bust in a way that looks like growths on the skin. This is to be symbolic of something that takes up an increasing amount of space in and on a person’s body, over time. On them are faces expressing emotions like happiness, fear, boredom, shock, and sadness. They are based on drawings of myself that I did as a child. The construction of “Stand In” involved building a plywood base and wooden armature. The armature was covered in chicken wire. It was then covered with discarded drop-sheets from my studio, and plaster gauze, to create a hard surface. The comfort objects were made using more old sheets, and scrap fabric from past sewing projects. They were stuffed and surrounded with the synthetic stuffing from a couch my parents were throwing away. The faces were sculpted out of oil-based clay, molded using alginate and cast in plaster. Everything was then painted with acrylic paint and various acrylic mediums. Materials used were consciously chosen to reflect the concept of this piece and to not contradict my goals as an artist and human being. I make a point in my life and art to accept what I already have and use it to make something I can feel good about. Using scrap materials makes my art practice more sustainable environmentally and financially, and mirrors what I am trying to do with complicated feelings and memories and how I would like them to affect my life going forward. The couch stuffing is especially emotionally charged because it is a remnant of a piece of furniture that existed and participated in the period of my life that this piece is referencing. The couch was there for so much life and death, and good and bad parts of my life. I have infused the stuffed objects on “Stand In” with this material that holds so much of my personal history. In this phase of my artistic practice, I continue to engage in conversations surrounding family disfunction, queerness, forgiveness, misogyny in the family and from authority figures, and the pain of confronting your past. Not everything we experience is sad and serious, and I believe when referring to childhood experiences, it is important to recognize the silly and fun, as well as the pain. What inspired me to look more deeply into my childhood was the book “Children’s drawings as diagnostic aids”, by Joseph H. Di Leo, MD. It brought to my attention to the potential links in the art I made as a child to illnesses that went untreated because I was quiet and unable to articulate that something was wrong. Before taking this project on, I was scanning and sending copies of report cards from elementary school to a psychiatrist to identify something that I have always struggled with. While reading the comments left by teachers about a nice quiet child, who did not participate in class discussion, was disorganized and made lots of careless errors, I realized that child is still very much alive within me. I knew it would be important to allow them to express their true feelings through this piece, and to allow others to see it. ”