Robert E. Bricker

As I experience my life, I transmute my experiences into art. Sometimes I tell of my joys, and sometimes I tell of my personal tragedies. ‘Pantheon Urn’ is an artwork that I created after enduring what felt to me to be humiliation — even catastrophe. I portrayed myself on the vase as the fumbling foundry man: blindfolded and naked, walking on fire, and in dumbfounded disarray. Thus, the protagonist is a pathetic anti-hero. By situating myself within the pantheon of myth, I am hoping to tell the very human stories that we all experience. 

I have included many gods in the scenes in order to emphasize the enormity of what I was experiencing, including the three heavyweights of greek mythology. Zeus has his hand on the breast of a woman, Neptune is also acting lecherously, and Hades is so appalled by the scene that he has gone for cover down a manhole. None of these Gods are in any position (moral or otherwise) to assist the antihero. Even Jesus can be found among the chaos, but much harder to find.

By no means do I intend to complain with my art; quite to the contrary — my goal is to entertain through juxtaposed and slightly veiled symbols that come across to the viewer as visual poetry. Classical imagery such as Helios transporting the sun with his horse-drawn chariot is mashed up against a passenger jet excreting pollutants. The glowing eye of Egyptian pyramid is similarly as alarming as a  ringing rotary-dial telephone. Seemingly anachronistic symbols are paired with each other to trigger the viewer’s subconscious. 

In my investigation of relief sculpting, I have explored a ‘wrap-around’ relief technique on vessel forms — there is no Y-axis that frames the composition, and it is impossible to see the entire image all at once. Thus, the storylines of the relief unfold for the viewer over time, similar to literature and to theatre. I discovered what I refer to as ‘cylindrical composition’, with plot themes rising and diminishing as the vase is circumambulated, or rotated before the eye.