Sculptor Judy Haberl – She’s Got Some Small Shoes To Fill

November 23, 2009 by cinder
Filed under art & sole

By shuzsociety "art & sole" columnist Claudia Lynch ~

As a child, bronzed baby shoes always struck me as a kind of trophy. With their dark, shiny metal and marble base with a slice of green felt on the bottom (which for some reason I always turned the thing over to inspect), they bore a remarkable physical resemblance to the prizes for bowling or softball that were also tucked up onto Grandma’s high bookshelves, or perched atop a piano or end table. More than that, they were bits of frozen evidence that all my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents were once tiny babies, and that their parents had once been proud of what they’d produced. When you’re five or six years old, and the answer to “Whose were those?” is “Uncle Ray”, and Uncle Ray is the oldest man you know, even a small child is able to grasp a bit of the cycle of life.

A single bronzed baby shoe is pretty tiny, but when 200 pair of them are placed side by side, the effect is massive and arresting. Judy Haberl’s “Baby Opera: Walks of Life”, is an excellent example of how everyday objects presented in new and unexpected ways can make the viewer sit up and take notice.

Sculptor Judy Haberl's "Baby Opera: Walks of Life"

Q ~ What brought this on?
Judy ~ The sculptural part of “Baby Opera” began with my personal collection of bronzed baby shoes, starting with my own pair. Over the years I had collected about 40 pairs. When I was asked to make the first piece for the Decordova museum, I expanded the number to over 400 shoes to achieve a “critical mass”, a large enough number to look the size of a chorus — or some zany, coppery, musical instrument. In general, I am an artist who has used found objects in my work. I am very interested in the history of the objects that get used in a piece. It is profoundly interesting to me that each bronzed shoe used here literally contains the original, actual shoe. Each shoe is like a little sarcophagus encased in a coating of copper particles, through a process called electroplating. Each small shoe or pair of shoes is literally a shrine to its formerly small owner. That shrine was often kept in the living room or on the mantle as a repository of the hopes and aspirations that parents have for their children. It seemed that by grouping an enormous number of them into one sculpture, that the collective murmering of them would be much more significant.

Q ~ It looks like you’ve done a couple of different versions of this piece. Can you tell me a little about that?
Judy ~ I have done two versions of the piece. “Baby Opera I” was done originally for the Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, for an exhibition called “Pretty Sweet: The Sentimental Image in Contemporary Art”. Version II — the one created for “The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories” at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA — is called “Baby Opera: Walks of Life”.

“It’s profoundly interesting to me that each bronzed shoe used here literally contains the original, actual shoe” stated Judy Haberl.

Q ~ Sound is an unexpected element in a sculpture, too.
Judy ~ Both versions have a significant sound portion that is integral to the piece. Version I contains the sounds of children laughing, crying, singing, whining to evoke our individual and complex memories of childhood. Version II represents the cycle of life via the sound of the footstep. It traces our human journey from the baby step, through the sounds of children running, joggers, tap-dancers, people walking/working, solitary walkers and finally, at the end of life, someone limping with a cane. It seemed necessary to address the significance of the shoe and all of the attendant activities. It also parallels the cycle of seasons — Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter — as stages of our lives. If you listen carefully, you can hear the splash of bare baby feet at the beach, the crunching of fall leaves, the dry squeaky crunch of snow.

Q ~ How did you arrive at the arrangement of the shoes, and the overall shape of the piece?
Judy ~ The sculpture is 10 feet wide by 5 feet in height. It was made in the shape of a classical chorus, where the shape of it directs the sound to the audience. The shoes are arranged in descending order of size, with the larger shoes at the top and the smallest at the bottom. I oriented them with the opening of the shoes at the bottom, so that they are more anthropomorphic and look like hundreds of small mouths.

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Judy Haberl is a Professor of Sculpture at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. When she’s not working with shoes, Judy sometimes turns to other iconic women’s images. Her work for “Unutterable: Hidden Agendas” at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, MA, features cast rubber purses. The purses are translucent, and the semi-revealed objects within range from everyday purse denizens like keys and makeup to handguns, pearl necklaces and handcuffs. You can see more of her work at www.judyhaberl.com.