Frock Sculpture

BORN: 1961, UNITED STATES Realm of Shadows: The Art of Claudia Flynn Excerpts from essay by Paul J. Forte "One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light." -- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth The transformation that Joseph Campbell writes of is one of consciousness and involves an awakening to the inner life of the soul. This awakening leads to seeing the world with new eyes; a deepening of vision that enables one, among other things, to recognize the metaphorical potential of the commonplace; the stuff of life often happened upon by chance. Like all work that heralds a new way of seeing, Claudia Flynn's art is deeply moving: transporting us as it were into the depths of the everyday world to reveal a dark and mysterious interior. Flynn's work, often ritualistic in the ways that it transforms the objects she finds, does not turn away from the world; on the contrary, it fully embraces the world and reconnects it with an inner life, a life of the soul. This is the source of the work's animation and hold on us, a reconnection involving an intimate exploration of the inner capacity of things; ultimately their archetypal potential I believe that her outward exploration of the world was a stimulus that led to an inner journey, something that continues through her art, building a lasting bridge between inner and outer worlds. The inner world and its archetypal substrate are only glimpsed in our dreams, fantasies and on rare occasions through artwork. And yet its reality for the psyche, whether we know it or not, underscores every breath we take. Claudia Flynn's work raises a curtain on this vital inner world. Journeys always have a beginning. Claudia Flynn's was mythically enacted in a 1984 performance/installation piece at the Woods Gerry gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design, titled Dwelling. Flynn constructed and then inhabited a small cave-like structure made of earth; laying nude inside the space in a fetal position. The cave is a powerful archetypal symbol evoking the "primordial functions of the earth mother as both womb and tomb." Dwelling could symbolize an entrance to the underworld; a mythical realm of "death, return, initiation and rebirth.