Fragments , 1960s

In the 1990s, I continued exploring the human body through fragments, but I also began making complete figures. After years of studying isolated arms, legs, torsos, and backs, I wanted to understand how the entire body could express emotion through balance, weight, posture, and movement.

Works such as Angelica and Toasting to Your Health marked this shift. Complete figures allowed me to explore the relationships between the feet, hips, spine, shoulders, arms, and head. A slight tilt of the pelvis, a bent knee, a turned head, or a change in weight could suggest uncertainty, strength, vulnerability, attention, or readiness to move.

I was interested in how much emotion I could express without relying on the face. The angle of a neck, the openness of a chest, the tension in a hand, or the way a body leaned could reveal more than a specific expression. I wanted the figures to remain open and unknowable, allowing viewers to bring their own feelings and experiences to them.

Although I moved toward complete figures, I never lost my interest in the fragment. A missing hand or partial torso could invite the viewer to imagine what lay beyond the sculpture. A complete figure offered a different kind of mystery: it could be whole and still remain emotionally unresolved.

These sculptures continued ideas that had begun in my ballet works, but they moved beyond the dancer and the fragment. I was trying to understand what the body could communicate without words—to make figures that carried memory, longing, hesitation, strength, and vulnerability. Whether fragmented or complete, the body became my way of exploring what it means to be present in the world.