by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
Painting shells and bones didn't cut it for artist Michele Basta.
"It wasn't fully satisfying," she said. "I needed to do something else."
Basta spends her days in her Old Town loft creating an environment where the remains of animals can come back to life through sculptures.
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"They are kind of animal and human hybrid creatures, where I use animal bones and a human figure out of metal," she said.
Basta is making five sculptures for an interactive exhibit that will open in the spring at the Curio Art House at 619 Mountain Road N.W.
Her latest sculpture for the exhibit is a dress form covered in papier-mÉchÇ. The bottom half resembles a human buttocks with legs that fuse together into a sharp point. Basta, who is a barista at the Blue Dragon, creates the papier-mÉchÇ from used coffee filters. The arms are a wood and metal horse yoke.
"They are things that we made with our hands that are so beautiful and useful and essential," she said.
Basta also uses vegetables from the compost at the Blue Dragon in her exhibit.
"I squish them," she said. "I wanted to make paper, but I didn't want to make any old paper. I wanted it to be translucent and have texture to it."
Basta uses the vegetable paper to make light-boxes. She places the paper between two pieces of glass, which are illuminated by fluorescent light.
"The vegetable light-boxes are supposed to be a backdrop for the sculptures," she said.
The mask on each sculpture is removable so people can wear it.
"It kind of came from that idea where you go and see some amazing sculpture, and you feel like the artist put so much of their spirit and their energy into it that it almost moves," she said. "It just commands the room."
Basta said the sculptures are made to be performed with.
"These are kind of coming out of my studies of ritual and various religions, mythologies, legends and altars," she said. "All those things are running through my head, so of course you'd react to them. Of course you'd go up to them, take the mask off, and put it on and experience it for yourself. So to me, it makes sense."
Basta gathers about 10 people, puts them in costume and asks them how they feel or how the environment makes them want to move.
"They take that inspiration that they pull out of it and move in it," she said. "I might give them a simple direction like, 'In this one, we are going to raise the dead.'"
Basta said the performances are not rehearsed, because she wants to encourage
spontaneity.
"I don't like to have too much direction, because then it seems too much like a play - too rehearsed, and it's not fresh enough," she said. "So, I can say in this next performance, I might use all my amphibian or fish-like costumes, and it will be a watery kind of mood. I might have an idea of what the music will sound like, but that's as much control as I want."
Basta said she wants to complete her project by the spring so she can have monthly performances.
"I love this project so much because it's like a big experiment," she said. "You never know how it is going to look, and it's always looking interesting. Nothing's a mistake."
