This is all about the basics.

After a lifetime of making sculpture I find myself drawn to the simple: shape, form, surface, and the nuances of subtle color. I love how light falls differently on a glossy surface and a matte one. Or how shadow slides over a curved form with infinite degrees of gray but sputters across a craggy form. I thrill at intersections where line meets line, shape meets shape, ivory meets polar white and there is harmony - or a brawl.

Neuroscientists think that recognizing shapes and understanding simple geometry may be primal and unique to human beings. I don’t know this for a fact, but I do believe that simple shapes and forms evoke conscious and unconscious associations. And absolutely inspires imagination.

Sometimes a cone is more than a cone.

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Western culture is rife with monuments to war heroes and military leaders. Horse and man merge, united in a symbol of male virility and domination. 

The works in The Politics of Fear are decidedly un-monumental.  The pieces are not made of gleaming marble, but rather from modest materials: buffed graphite applied onto thrift store plastic horses, nylons and rubber balls. The polished graphite highlights the uneven seams and joints, the textures of the rough nylons and the smooth plastic curves of the animals. The small scale requires a viewer to draw close, therefore limiting the interaction to a very personal experience.

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The exhibition How?Now. at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston Ma, in June 2019 was comprised of pieces from the series Politics of Fear started in 2017 and new pieces. These new pieces were tall plinths made of styrofoam, plaster, and plywood. Spindly and in disrepair, propped up with hardware, tape, and string, they represented the dubious monuments created to the men and ideologies that have controlled the narrative of our nation. The exhibition asked us to question these monuments and imagine an alternative.

In the fall of 2020, and in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and massive public call for the removal of Confederate monuments, the structures from How? Now were disassembled and re-assembled into an installation called What Now.

To see a video interview with Kathleen Volp about this work. 2020

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The installation "PRONK!" is an exuberant contemporary dialog with a 17th-century painting by Adriaen van Utrecht in the tradition of Dutch pronk still lifes (after the verb pronk, meaning to "show off").

Volp, who works in assemblage, combines materials including fake fruit, faux cockatoos, thrift-shop antiques and wood-grained spandex to address the parallels between the “ostentatious display” of commodities during the Dutch Golden Age and today’s conspicuous consumption.

Drawing on her longstanding engagement with the field of visual culture, she began by deconstructing van Utrecht’s painting through close looking to discover the relationships between the image and the viewer, or consumer, finding the narratives signaled by the objects and their arrangement, placement and perspective. The resulting riotously exuberant works humorously comment on the seemingly incongruous elements of the still life, not least of which is the titular live cockatoo (represented by a not particularly lifelike plastic parrot).

-Mary Bucci McCoy

read the full ESSAY BY MARY BUCCI MCCOY

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The works on this page with the exception of The Twins were created from the photos taken by my father Clarence R. Volp.  

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"A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss." Ignatius J Reilly

-John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

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The work in this series (with the exception of Darwin's Conundrum) combine fragments of broken Pre-Columbian pottery with 20th century mass-produced plastic toy parts.  Many of the pieces are a combination of broken Pre-Columbian (Mayan or Nayarit) figures, primarily the torso and/or feet. Others are made with the conical feet from broken tripod bowls of the Chupicuaro culture of southwestern Mexico. (300 to 200 BC)  Interestingly many of the clay figures used here were “mass-produced” themselves from molds, rather than modeled. 

These "mash-ups" of past and present form a humorous contrast of culture and time, while simultaneously reflecting on Western anxiety in a post-colonial world and the effects of global consumerism. Above all however, they are reflections of our humanness.

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Most of these are from a series of small constructions with castings made from the molds of vintage squeaky toys or porcelain "colonial" figurines. All are made of paper pulp unfired "clay", pigments and urethane, wax, resin, or acrylic finishes

The relationship of Word and Image is a consistent theme in my work.  I am fascinated by language systems and how structure and context affect meaning.  And as with any relationship, there are opportunities for conflicting priorities, suspicion and miscommunication.

1.Babel - (Genesis 11:11) a tower built by Noah's descendants (in Babylon) who intended it to reach up to heaven; God foiled them by confusing their language so they could no longer understand one another

2.babel - a confused mixture of sounds, voices, or languages; a confused assembly.

Dyslexia is language-based learning disability. Persons with dyslexia often experience difficulties with both oral and written other language skills, such as writing, and pronouncing words and writing.

Dyscalculia – a mathematical disability in which a person has unusual difficulty solving arithmetic problems and grasping math concepts.

Dysgraphia – a condition of impaired letter writing by hand—disabled handwriting. Impaired handwriting can interfere with learning to spell words in writing and speed of writing text. Persons with dysgraphia may have only impaired handwriting, only impaired spelling (without reading problems), or both impaired handwriting and impaired spelling.

15-20% of the population has a language-based learning disability.

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The origin of the Western genre of Still-life paintings began in the late 16th century to flourish during the 17 c. Dutch Golden Age, evolving into what is called pronkstilleven (still-lives of ostentatious display).  Pronk paintings documented the upper classes’ abundant accumulations and in turn the paintings themselves became a commodity of value.  I see a correlation between the social and economic conditions then and that of today: expanding global trade combined with unethical labor practices, special interest controlled domestic policies and rocketing inequity - all in the midst of abundance. Landfills of abundance.

In using these throw-away, made-in-China materials while referencing valuable works of art from the past, I hope to create work that in turn comments on the evolution (or not) of cultural perspectives and values, such as global commodification.

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various   things from the past but relevant tot the present