Following Stephen Paul Day’s progress as a sculptor is at times like following the history of the medium itself. He doesn’t just work in metal, wood, glass, ceramics and found objects; he gets right down to the basics. He built his own bronze foundry, although it became one of the more unusual casualties of Hurricane Katrina.
So you thought you knew Little Red Riding Hood? So did I, at least until I started thinking about it. Then I realized that all the old fairy tales had blended in my mind over time into a gumbo of little girls, wolves, princesses, frogs and dwarves, trailing off into a weird frontier populated by Frankenstein, Godzilla, Dracula, Dick Nixon and SpongeBob.
“Innocent Act,” Stephen Paul Day’s new collection of strangely beautiful, small-scale sculpture at Arthur Roger Gallery was inspired by the “Little Red Riding Hood” fairy tale. But not the softened, sanitized cartoon versions that most of us know best.
In the fall of 2001, New Orleans artists Stephen Paul Day and Sibylle Peretti were approached about creating a site-specific installation for the fall of 2002, to be exhibited in the Contemporary Arts Center’s First Floor Galleries.
I know you’re busy. You’ve got a ton of stuff to do at work, it’s your week to drive car pool, Sissy’s volleyball tournament begins tonight, you’ve got to pick up a king cake for the office party and you’re almost out of gas. But you can’t be any busier than Stephen Paul Day has been over the past two years.
To be coarse, today’s souvenirs suck. Nothing you get anymore as a memento from a vacation or of some event is imbued with any significance or feeling. What was the last souvenir you bought that you will keep a lifetime?