NARRATOR:

This jaunty figure by Bay Area artist Richard Shaw appears to be made out of a casual collection of found objects. If you examine it more closely, though, you’ll realize that every single part of its body, from its tin can head to its axe-head foot, has been formed from clay. Richard Shaw explains:

SHAW:

This is made out of porcelain. It just happens to be the material I work in, and it looks real, and everyone always asks me why don’t I make it out of the real objects, but painters don’t make paintings out of the real objects. And so I was doing these kind of realistic still lives and then in around 1978, 1977, I took the still lives and just started making them into people. I kind of stuck ’em on top of each other, and something that would have looked like a pile of junk in a room, I just suddenly made into these kind of walking figures in this realistic fashion.

NARRATOR:

Shaw’s techniques for molding and casting the clay, as well as for transferring designs onto the porcelain’s surface, reproduce the textures and colors of the objects he chooses with uncanny precision. Shaw has at times been inspired by American painters who specialized in the technique of trompe l’oeil, or fooling the eye. He credits other sources as well, including his father’s work as a cartoonist for Disney Studios. Like an animated character, the fellow you see here almost seems ready to dance a strange, hilarious jig.