Michelle Post’s sculptural Tronies will debut as a permanent installation at Grounds for Sculpture this fall. In our podcast the artist tells us how she received the commission and how she conceived of the ten large portrait heads that sit on plinths like a chorus of grumpy citizen jurors waiting for something to pass judgment on. Post, a self-taught artist who has worked in wood engraving as well as sculpture, showed the original prototypes for her commission at DaVinci Art Alliance last fall and that is where we first saw the amusing characters that are vaguely reminiscent of characters drawn by Daumier. Michelle Post spoke with us Jan. 31 at Da Vinci, where she explained her artistic progression from making detailed wood engravings to rough-carving foam into caricature heads. Post, by the way, is the aunt of David Dempewolf (of Marginal Utility) and shares a story about that. For pictures of Post’s Tronies and her other work, see her website.
This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. The slide show is edited by artblog Intern Alison McMenamin. Thanks to the Knight Foundation for helping us get the ball rolling on this project. Thanks also to J-Lab‘s Enterprise Reporting Fund and William Penn Foundation for additional support and to our partner WHYY NewsWorks for their ongoing support and for sharing artblog radio episodes on the arts & culture page of their community news site NewsWorks.org. You can subscribe to artblog radio on iTunes.
