Judy Fox at PPOW

Queen: "Looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
Who in this land is the fairest of all?"

Mirror: "Thou art fairer than all who are here, lady queen.
But more beautiful still is Snow White, as I ween."

An interesting twist on an all too familiar fairy tale from Grimm is presented at the PPOW gallery by artist Judy Fox titled 'Snow White and the Seven Sins’. I was over there yesterday and was frankly taken in by feelings of a visceral kind that seemed to evoke sexuality, lust and admiration. The artist seems to envelope the onlooker with fertile sexual imagination developed out of casting sculptures in terra cotta and cassein.

The take on the original tale is clear, Snow White lies in state after being poisoned by her queen-mother and is waiting to be revived by the archetypal princely kiss. She is surrounded by the seven dwarfs each one of whom seem to embody one of the original sins. On the snow white sculpture, the detail and the forms evoked were of flesh and the curves did not leave much to ones imagination.

I liked the dwarfs better, developed out of a cunning juxtaposition of the male and female sexual anatomy. Apart from the wide eyed curious stares of people looking to discern where in the sculpture the male appendage ends and the female’s begin, the dwarfs embodied the ease and grace with which Judy Fox has managed to integrate the sexual forms into a seamless whole that leaves one intrigued. On the whole, I liked the show a lot, not just for the vibrant colors on the pottery, but also for the imagery real and imagined that it conveyed.

Judy Fox, 'Snow White', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 8.5" x 58" x 25"

Judy Fox, 'Lust', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 8" x 26" x 15"

Judy Fox, 'Gluttony', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 12" x 25" x 12"

Judy Fox, 'Anger', 2007, terra cotta and casein, 25" x 15" x 11"