In the fourth part of our five-part interview, Dread & Delight Artist Timothy Horn, creator of “Mother-Lode” discusses what it was like working with sugar as an artistic medium.
Another dramatic work included in the exhibit is “Mother-Load,” created by the artist Timothy Horn. The sculpture is a child-sized, Cinderella-like carriage that was created using a variety of materials, but most notably it is coated in a layer of rock sugar and shellac.
The piece was created originally for a show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It was inspired by the “rags-to-riches story” of Alma Spreckels, the collector whose sugar fortune was used to found what is now part of the museum. She came from modest beginnings and rose to great wealth. She was never fully accepted by San Francisco society and had distant relationships with all of her children. This piece is Horn’s take on a gilded 18th-century Neapolitan sedan chair that Spreckels used as a phone booth in her home. Spreckels had a less-than-perfect life though she achieved great wealth. Horn’s sculpture explores and highlights the temporary nature of our existence while at the same time calling into question the values in a society that helped to shape the life of a person like Alma Spreckels.
ANDERSON TURNER / ABJ/OHIO.COM CORRESPONDENT