Hands wet with slip, I ran them over the mounds, my eyes magnifying between the clay in front of me and the close-up photo of my bare-naked ass on the laptop screen. Each time I looked at it, I thought ‘Is this what my ass really looks like?’ I didn’t have an issue with the way it looked, but it was just strange to see it from this angle, and to replicate it in clay? Almost impossible.
I used the end of an old paintbrush to press the keys, going back and forth between multiple angles of my butt, so that I knew every concave, slope, and divot. It had to be perfect.
She would be my doppelgänger, my twin, down to the smallest detail. “Our bodies are all we have,” I said aloud. It had become my mantra during this creation phase, something I had said in my short artist’s statement for Vessel.
I had thought that it would be easy. After all, no one knows my form better than me. But sculpting myself from scratch turned out to be something of a challenge. It didn’t seem to matter how many measurements I took, or how many of my nude reference photos I stared at, or for how long. There was always something missing, always something wrong.
Each feature had its own particular challenges. My ass was particularly hard. I depressed myself with the realisation that I would never see an unobstructed, perfect view of it with my own eyes. How could I recreate something that I had such an imperfect perspective of?
I would spend days on one feature. I had redone her — or my? — nose at least fifteen times, slicing it right off her face when I realised it was unsalvageable, and placing it back on so many times that I became disconcertingly familiar with the way my face looked without it. By that point, the mere sight of my nose filled me with such a strong sense of dysphoria and frustration, that I had to set it aside on the workbench and leave it for a time when I was more patient and forgiving.
My studio was a mess of clay smeared sheets to protect the wooden floors, buckets of clay and half-filled cups of water. Against the far wall, I had brought a very tall mirror that I had found at a flea market, which was now smeared with clay fingerprints. I wore very little clothing when I worked, so I could use the mirror like an immediate, easily pliable reference photo. I had positioned the myself, the sculpture and the mirror is such a way that all three objects were constantly within my view.
I was becoming frustrated with my ass, so I spun Vessel back around to face me, her backside now fading from my memory. But the clean, flat cut of her face forced me to look at my nose again, sliced off and sitting on the small workbench next to my twin. It made me grimace and I turned in my chair. Facing the nondescript brick wall of the studio, I let my mind roam free and felt the afternoon sun coming through the window and warming my skin. I didn’t want to look at her anymore. I grabbed a rag to wipe my hands on. I needed a break. Every angle of her was beginning to frustrate me.
I stood up and faced the mirror, using my artist eye to scrutinize my shape. This was research, I had to study my form for this piece. My hands fell to my body, familiar now with the feel of it under my fingers. I was surprised to find how similar to clay my stomach felt. Muscle memory took a gentle hold of my fingers, sending them to work atop my material. My hands, my tools, still wet and muddy, pulled and twisted at my stomach, pressed along the stark bones of my skeleton. They travelled up, quickly, found their way to my nose. The fingers pushed and pried at the slope of it, tying to force the form to shift. The hands fell away, the nose was the same shape as before, freckled and bent, but now covered in brown clay.
I grabbed the rag again and scrubbed at the caked clay of my torso and face, leaving big red marks where I rubbed too hard. It was under my fingernails too and had solidified there. On my thighs, dried patches of clay flaked off my skin and onto the floor as I moved.
Maybe I could just study the reference photos instead. I hunched over the laptop and skipped through my nudes with lightning speed as they slowly travelled over my body. From ass, to thighs, to calves to feet, and then back up to the head, collarbones, stomach. I looked thinner in these photos, I realised. I imagined the coffee, the smoothie, the hefty serving of ramen I had eaten today, and imagined them all, coagulated and sitting in my stomach. I could feel the bloat without even looking at it. If Vessel was really about how physical appearances don’t matter, shouldn’t I add an extra layer of clay onto my – no, her – stomach? For the sake of accuracy?
I slammed the laptop shut.
Increasingly I had found myself wanting to escape, to get away from her. Even now, not looking at her, her shadow on the wall haunted me — she was standing, her back straight as she twisted slightly, her arms reaching above her — a serene, more poised version of my own silhouette, which was sitting slumped and tired beside her.
With a sigh, I fixed my posture, ran my hands through my hair. I joined my hands and raised them high over my head, stretching out my spine. I couldn’t help but watch my own shadow as my back arched, and my head leant back; I was captivated by the way my bones undulated, the way the shadow of my form moved like water against the brick wall. I settled back on my stool, picking clay out of my nails.
Something dark had been brewing in the studio. Jealousy? I wondered. The more I sculpted her, perfected her, the more I hated her. Her haunted form was my own, a warped and twisted twin that made a constant mockery of my ever-changing body. But this — movement and freedom — was mine. I was the creator and the muse. She was nothing more than a mound of wet dirt that did as I told it to do. That was some consolation.
I stopped mid stretch when I saw the shadow on the wall. I could only see part of the profile of my face, and something wasn’t quite right. It had to be perfect.
Trying to make sense of the shadows in front of me, I turned too far and found myself on the floor when the stool could no longer accommodate for my twisting centre of gravity.
Frozen on the floor, I kept my eyes on the wall, too scared to turn around and face her. Sitting up, I put my hands on my face to make sure it was mine. I stilled when I found only an alien flatness.
The shadow on the wall was still moving, stretching, relishing. And her proportions, they were perfect, from the curves of her ass, down to the tip of her nose.
