Eris with the Apple of Discord - Sculpture by Sarah Myers

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

Wine-Coloured Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums, Desert Branches in a Pitcher
Photography by Sarah Myers

Great, glowing burgundy chrysanthemums, placed in a graceful pitcher - a form inspired by an ancient Greek shape, the oinochoe, and created by Amy Myers.  Photography by Sarah Myers.

Wine-coloured Chrysanthemums
Photography, Sarah Myers

Ox, Charcoal Studies. S. Myers

Ox: Charcoal Study      S. Myers, Charcoal on Paper

    He lay, a brilliant splash of red and white in the spring-green grass - the quiet owner of a gorgeous pair of horns. I’ve so wanted a picture of him for my art; but day after day as we drove past his field, I did not have my camera, or we didn’t have time, or he and his fellow steer were at the far end of their lot.

    But the other day I did capture his portrait. He didn’t mind my proximity, or my fuss with the camera. When spoken to, he looked at me with gentle unconcern.

   This first study was drawn while looking at the photograph and remembering the animal himself – his massive bulk, the extravagant span and curve of his horns.

Ox from Memory, Study    S. Myers, Charcoal on Paper

    The second sketch is an experiment. I hid the photo from sight, also my resulting study, and simply drew from memory, trying to recall the information I had gathered.

    I really think this technique of working from mentally assembled information is similar to how the ancient Greeks created drawings for their pottery. There is both a certain simplification and a certain emphasis on memorable details in Greek pottery paintings that makes me think that though they gathered their primary information from life, painting on vases was not done directly from a live model. The forms had settled and brewed a little while in the consciousness, as a study and as a memory – of how a spine curves, of how a dog’s legs and head look from behind, of how fingers rest on a harp-string. Then the pot-painters created the red and black shapes that parade across the best of Greek ceramics – depictions of men, women, horses, lions... and, very occasionally, a handsome ox...

Hubris

Neptune and Sparrow, S. Myers    Photograph 2011

HUBRIS

Upon the shoulder of an angry Neptune in the square

Danced a handsome sparrow full of restaurant scraps.

He preened, he fluffed, put bird-dust in the air

While people stood about and looked at maps.

***

O be not angry, Neptune, near your nose

This creature roosts himself, an arrant midge;

Nor pour your fury out on all of those

Who see, but do not blame, the sacrilege.

For even if we thought as men have thought

And owned your might, and your dominion broad,

We still might not dislodge him from the spot -

He, protege of yet still mightier god.

Yea Neptune, see the omen we ignore,

This arrogance that preens and props and sprawls;

The symbol of what rules now evermore -

Without whom not the proudest sparrow falls.

                                                     - S. Myers, 2011