Rhonda Schaller: The Journey From Maiden To Maid - Patricia Spears Jones

What is a woman? Does a woman have to prove her womanhood? Why do these questions seem so strange. It is December 1992 - the year of the Woman. And yet, in the art world the talk is of "bad girls". This occurred to me while visiting Rhonda Schaller's studio caught between Chinatown and Tribeca. Her art is caught between complex spiritual concerns and a charged classical physicality, and somewhere on the edge of this talk about girlhood, womanhood, and the new feminism.

Schaller's propensity for nesting forms and materials is a constant in her work. Her baskets hold fabric, Spanish moss, paint, blood, sweat and tears. These works marry a complex personal iconography to the physical evolutions in a woman's body: the collapsed sack (post partum depression), the sacred mound (a woman's fervent sexuality - luxuriant, terrifying), the veiled works (the pregnant bride.) While rich in symbol, materials and color, these works have an amazing goofiness: the mothers laughter at her baby's awkwardness, the bride's smirking familiarity with the husbands idiosyncrasies, the hag's astonishing smile as the maid recalls her first wisdom. Schaller's serious play with these materials brings us into the vessel, into the journey within.

These works represent the bridge on which the artist takes her journey, from her own inner turmoil to a public rendering of these private difficult thoughts, dreams and desires. Between the spiritual acceptance of the hag within and the desire for the husband, the child, the home, community. As with all journeys, each step is both simple and painful. It is from that pain that these vessels arrive before us.

Schaller's use of color extends the adventure of these works. The properties of gold, of red, of deep browns and greens add tones to the sculptures, playing with or off light. Giving us clues to the artist's mind at work and at play.

Each of these works carries us along the journey form maiden to maid. From a woman in the making to the woman fully formed. Schaller's consideration of this ancient journey is fraught with misperception in the Age of AIDS. With sexuality and gender appearing so tentative, with motherhood itself under assault by some thinkers and marriage suspect by many more, it takes what is a kind of courage to stake one's artistic territory in such ancient and rocky soil.

But her courage is one born form taking the steps on the road to discovery and re-discovery. To find the girl within who is the woman adored or the woman scorned. Like the joke in the middle of a heartbreaking blues or the swift comeback of an enraged comedienne, Schaller finds the roots of laughter in the womb's amazing passage: from the maid's empty sack to the hag's startling memories. In between an infant surrounded by blood, luck and hope. The pregnant bride in all her glory: serene, secure standing on shaky ground.

Patricia Spears Jones
Copyright December 92
Author of THE WEATHER THAT KILLS; Coffee house Press '95