Janine Antoni

Janines work is a blur distinction between performance art and sculptures. She transforms everyday activities such as eating, bathing and sleeping into art. Her main tool that she uses is her own body. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her own teeth. She has also used her brainwave signals that are recorded while she dreamed at night as a patter to weaving a blanket. She is one of the only artists that i know, that uses her teeth to sculpt things. She says that "the process of using her own body is sort of gentle and loving, there is a self-love. Its like trying to come to terms with that surface of being you."

Lick and Lather - She worked with the tradition of a self -portrait. She took the mold directly from her body, and she used a material called "alginate." It gets every little details even the pores, and she even molded her hair. She melted down 35 lbs of chocolate poured it into the mold that she made of herself and re-sculpted her image by licking the chocolate. She did the same exact thing for soap -  the soap piece is about trying to be on the outside of herself and have that relationship with her own image!

Moor - This piece is made out of fabric and hair -  Janine's hair. When you look closely at the rope, it looks like it is braided together, but it actually isn't. Is is twisted so tightly together. Then they twisted the strands back on themselves then released and it naturally created a kind of lock into each other. When Moor was being created Janine went back to her birthplace, and there was where she developed the relationship between concept and reality of her piece.

Saddle - Tanned cow hide. She draped cow skin over her body as she was couched on the ground in a crawling position and sat there while the skin hardened in that position. The sculpture is mysterious i think, its like asking yourself "why is someone hiding under there not only that by why is it in a ghostly form. The quality in the work is very strong .

Conclusion - I like her work because it can be very hyperbolic and can sit on a historical levee. Her end results are engaging, appealing and provoking. I like that her work shows a constant wide variety of mediums that she uses, i like that rather than seeing a certain style in her work i recognize a voice, and that is what i believe is to be very important.