Ceci Cole McInturff

Washington, DC

Breaking the Digital Heart

mixed media

handmade book: 81/2 x 61/2; bodice/cage: 36 x 24 x 8 closed

© 2009

$450

Breaking the Digital Heart is a headless bodice/cage of steel encasing a handmade codex of 30 poems which chart a fantasy adulterous relationship, something contemporary statistics and confidences indicate is not rare in our culture. Narrative images on the fabric skirt speak to faded, elegant romance fueled by a fear of lost youth. An empty bird swing in the cage suggests the illusion of happiness as a constant. The cage doors hinge open, suggesting possibility, and a desire to change life roles mid-course. Steel prongs throughout imply risk and deception. A weighty metal and glass base suggests the tether of children in such cases. This sculptural book object is intended as a vaguely beautiful and creepy remnant of power: obtained, wielded, risked, lost.

Steel, barbed wire, chainsaw chain, glass, black and white photography transferred to sheer fabric. Handmade book is vintage leather and steel hardware, digitally printed on vellum, with illustrations of black and white photography on fabric which is hand-sewn onto pages.

 

Dirty Laundry is a sculptural box containing two slim, hand-bound essays on contemporary family life. Symbols of Adam and Eve, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty suggest that myth looms large in our culture’s fairytale of what constitutes family, and how ‘nice,’ ‘good’ or ‘clean’ ones behave. Opening the roof, viewers may gently pull out a clothesline of feminine artifacts tied with ribbon…lingerie, veil, baby shoe, handkerchief…each printed with verse and images supporting the essay themes. The experience evokes feelings anyone growing up amid family may relate to, including that in real life people are good but not perfect, there is no dirty laundry so much as realities to which we must adjust, and that it all comes out in life’s wash.

Cast resin, wood and snakeskin, book board and paper, satin ribbon, found objects.

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Ceci Cole McInturff is a sculptor, writer and owner of 87FLORIDA, a working studio, exhibit and performance space in Washington, D.C. Her work plays off of relationships between non-traditionally combined materials, and has been described as “brave” and “evocative” in eliciting objects’ “ability to express emotion.” She is a native of Florida, a former executive with the CBS Television Network, and the mother of sons aged 19 and 15.