 Giotto's Jolly Camel © 1998 Ginger Henry Geyer glazed porcelain 10 ½” x 14” diameter adaptation from Giotto's Adoration of the Magi, c. 1304, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua The great Florentine painter Giotto is the starting point for naturalistic art in the West. His emotive rendering of the human figure turned the tide toward the human expressiveness of the Renaissance. One of his most expressive creatures is the wise man's camel in a huge fresco series in Padua. This blue-eyed camel has a joyfully ambiguous anatomy—something of a cross between a lamb and a giraffe, similar to the anthropomorphic creatures on children's swim toys. So I made the camel into an innertube, with that goofy grin plastered on its face.  The story of this piece evolved during its making. My initial conception did not include the goggles, only the sagging innertube. This is a camel that does not want to go through the eye of a needle or even get near a needle. He hasn't sprung a hole, but someone has popped open his air valve. He's been deflated. Why?—is it about sadness at Christmas or Epiphany? Or the long summer wait for the Incarnation? The camel form seemed rather lonely, so I made him some swim goggles which barely fit over his floppy ears. While glazing the pieces, a boy visited my studio and suggested that I paint the goggles solid black. Why would a swimmer wear black opaque goggles, I wondered. Soon after I was reading Isaiah and Jeremiah decrying the numbness and apathy of the dominate culture, the word “blinders” appeared. It suddenly became clear—by deflating a little, the camel’s tightly fitted goggles/blinders slipped off his head (and indeed, after the glaze firing, they shrunk in a way that prevents them going over his head at all). By losing his hot air and his rigidity, the camel's painted-on optimism was changed. He bowed his head and gained the humility that camels usually symbolize in religious art. He exemplifies Isaiah 35:5:“then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. |