Body-building not of the muscle kind

"Triptych" by Jen Harmon Allen, an installation created as a commission for the Not Just Another Pretty Face program at
Salt Lake Art Center, 2011. 

For years I have been building with body parts. Plastic and plaster casts of legs in particular make great building materials in my world. Pictured is an installation I put up at the Salt Lake Art Center from June to August this summer. It was a commissioned piece, in which the patron wanted leg "portraits" of his three ever-active children (yep I think I can do that).


Treating the flesh-and-blood body as object is complicated, but making body parts into objects is rather healing. Think milagros. Think about the transcendental nature of repetitive body movements such as walking. When we repeat something over and over, our thoughts have room to grow. 


Years ago, while making plaster casts of a female figure of mine, I ended up with some broken appendages left over: legs, arms, and heads. I found I was more interested in these fragments than the whole unbroken sculpture. I began casting multiples of these legs and appendages as a meditation on bringing life to broken things. 


I am not by nature a patient person. The hypnotic nature of filling and refilling my molds has turned into both a personal and rhetorical pilgrimage towards patience and progress. One of our greatest sins is in taking the body for granted. Becoming mindful of our life-filled bodies is a process I embark on every time I work on these legs.

Days and months later I find myself with an army of legs with which I can fill a room. I am exultant until the exhibition is over. And I start all over again…

"Triptych" (detail) by Jen Harmon Allen, an installation created as a commission for the Not Just Another Pretty Face program at Salt Lake Art Center, 2011.

"Triptych" by Jen Harmon Allen, an installation created as a commission for the Not Just Another Pretty Face program at
Salt Lake Art Center, 2011.