The Devil’s Interval: Tom Bartel and his Sculpture

Written by Pema Chodar

1. THE LENS OF THE AUTHOR

Several years before this one, I was a frequent contributor to journals such as this. But life will change on its own accord, and for the last few years my occupation has been that of caregiver and primary witness to my mother’s descent into insanity. One of the most unsettling things about severe dementia is that the sufferer lives in an uncertain state of limbo. From the outside, it seems the person’s mind is already decomposing, and cannot inform a body that is abnormally accelerating in age, that it is time to go – and so the march towards death is agonizingly slow. Aged and decrepit, punished and suffering, and yet the person so close to your own sanity on trial, pushing the limits of your well-being, and harshly appraising your own mortality, then by all means try it. For now, however, I simply ask you to understand that it is through this very personal lens that I am seeing Tom Bartel’s ceramic sculpture in a new way. To me, Bartel’s ceramic figures seem suspended in a state of abeyance not unlike the purgatory in which my mother is imprisoned. The artist’s forms almost certainly seem to be juveniles – drawn from dolls, toys, and figurines that speak of youth and naivete. Hairless and chubby-cheeked, one could imagine that prior to their surface treatment, these were well- Aged and decrepit, punished and suffering, and yet the person so close to death seems innocently infantile death seems innocently infantile – unaware of what’s happening, unable to help themselves in almost any way, and devoid of the memories and experiences that define one’s individuality. It is normal, I suppose, to watch motherhood and grotesque frailty collide and to feel – along with pity, sadness, anger, and compassion – a deeply penetrating and all-pervading fear for one’s own vulnerability and uncertain future.