The
Ears of Sundry Gods:
Donna Pardue
The works in the exhibit are carved from apples, the archetypal fruit. Although the apple represents some of our most powerful emotions and beliefs— all that is most wholesome, Eve's apple was the instrument of the original sin and therefore, the cause of aging and mortality. The Norse goddess of immortality, Idun, had a box of magic apples, which the gods ate every day in order to keep themselves young. Other references to the apple occur in the tales of King Arthur and Avalon (the place of apples) and the Brothers Grimm character, Sleeping Beauty, who fell into a deathlike sleep after eating an apple with a magical poison.
The apple works are Vanitas, nature mort, decaying before our eyes.
The biggest influences on my work have come from poets and writers. Vladimir Nabokov defined art as "beauty plus pity... for the simple reason that beauty must die." † The apple works are a microcosm of that mystery.
When fresh, the sculptures have a transluscent quality, almost marble-like in appearance, but this lasts only an hour or so. They begin to take on a brown, bruised quality, then a soft leather-like quality and finally begin to wrinkle. After a year, they have shrunken and wrinkled considerably and have taken on a warm brown color.
Donna Pardue works in Austin, Texas. Various pieces of these apple works have been shown in The Ears of Sundry Gods in 2002 at Three Walls in San Antonio, Texas; Hallowed Ground at Gallery Lombardi, in 2002; Blue Genie Studios' Night Gallery 2003; Outside Art in 2005 in Austin and at the Arlington Museum of Art in 2005.They have been featured on Out on the Porch with Jim Swift on KXAN TV, Austin, and on Ver para Creer on Univision network.