Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers |
Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers 2018, terracotta |
The precious fruit poised in her hand, she turns, watching for her moment; heavy cloak clutched tightly across her side but right arm lightly lifted to aim. Her eyes glow with a sudden spark…
In Greek legend, Eris – Discord – stirred by mischief, secretly brings a golden apple inscribed “To the Fairest” with her to a wedding feast on Mount Olympus, and, at the height of the revels, tosses it into the midst of the celebrating deities. The treasure, claimed and counter-claimed by the most powerful goddesses of the Grecian theogony, causes a quarrel which wreaks havoc on the serenity of the divine abode, and this squabble in its turn causes the grief and pain of the Trojan War among mortals far below.
I have never been able to feel that the gravity of the results could place a greater responsibility Eris than on the other mightier beings that took the conflict so much farther; and her playful objectivity (after all, the apple could have remained hers) gives a certain sympathy to her place in the myth. So I chose this subject in spite of its mischievous, almost militant, nature, as I saw in it the possibility to capture a form I've long wanted to investigate; a sculptural moment that is both the height of action and a point of stillness and suspended motion. Her hand is just at that transition where the impetus will be imparted to the fruit, which will fly from her a fraction of a second later; and in the expression of her wide eyes and slightly parted lips, you can see her thoughts as she both anticipates the result of her deed and already sees it completed in her mind.
And there is in this sculpture simply the abrupt glimpse of action conceived and taken, perhaps if abstracted into that one fragment of time, a thing that held the good of its own movement and beauty.
Eris, Sarah Myers detail from below |
Eris with the Apple of Discord impressionistic detail of hand |
Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers sculpture from back |
Eris, Sarah Myers detail of face |
Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers Sculpture in terracotta |
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