South Campus art exhibit celebrates motherhood
by Annette Germinario, reporter

    Artist Patty Degenhardt mostly works with her hands.

    Sometimes she uses one multipurpose tool to help her persuade the movement of a portion of clay. Otherwise, she prefers nothing between her hands and the clay. There is communication in this relationship. It is as if she is divining the cosmos for guidance toward just the right expression of her thoughts.

    Degenhardt approaches sculpture as the shaping of matter around a void: First, working the clay to a more flexible temperature with the warmth of her hands. Then, coiling, shaping and building up the hollow clay formation.

    The endeavor may start with a sketchpad idea, but the artist claims that she never knows where the process will take her.

    Building sculpture from the bottom up, Degenhardt says, gives her time to think and experiment and just go with where her hands are leading her. Along the journey she must stop and let each section dry in order to bear the weight of the next section and eventually the entirety of the piece.

    Glazing and firing, the final stages, present both enhancement and challenge to the completed work. Degenhardt displays a flair for glazes in her use of many different types in her work. Her understanding of the thermodynamics involved here extends to her skill in building her own kilns.

    In her one-woman show Aspects of Motherhood, now in place in the Carillon Gallery on South Campus during September, Degenhardt displays clay sculptures and vessels, paintings and hanging ceramics.

    As a mother and grandmother, she says she is inspired to create impressions of both the universality and transcendence of these roles in painting and clay.

    Degenhardt offers the following insight in her artist statement: “The impact of motherhood on the individual woman, the child and the future of society is profoundly significant. My work deals with this impact and its implications to future generations.”

    The centerpiece of the show is Army of Mothers, a floor piece. Its ranks of about 50 differently glazed mother/child forms create an imposing greeting as one enters the gallery. This is art with a mission. Arranged in a marching formation, this army’s battle cry is “non-violence and peace through forgiveness.”

    The ideas for the clay vessels come from Degenhardt’s examinations of pods full of seeds. The vessels contrast the open space in many of her sculptures.

    “Once a woman carries a child in her body, there is always a void there that she wants to fill,” she offers.

    She refers to filling this void as seeing, touching or thinking about the child.

    Her paintings reflect the sculptures in a two-dimensional format. Mostly, the paintings came after the sculpture but, in a few cases, before.

    Degenhardt is a Tarrant County College adjunct professor of art. Most recently, she received the Blue Ribbon Award of Excellence at the 2001 Plano National Juried Exhibition. She is also a writer. Mostly, she likes to play in the clay.

    The Carillon Gallery, located in the South Campus Performing Arts Center, is open Monday-Thursday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The exhibit runs through Sept. 27.