Brooder
1994
sculpture
36" x 16" x 16"
stuffed fabric, polyurethane foam, stones, wood chair, brass tacks
A genteel mahogany ladderback chair, its sprigged floral seat opened at the center into a puckered orifice — upholstery drawn down and pinned with brass tacks so the cloth gathers like a cinched sphincter. Through this aperture the chair issues its own anatomy: a pendulous sack, sewn from the same demure fabric, hangs between the front legs, scrotal and gravid. Within the hole, stones swaddled in foam nest like ova or descended testes, hard cores softened for holding. The seat both receives a sitter's body and grows a body of its own, a single vent that excretes and reproduces at once.