Wildthings by Kathe Umlauf

Frame Shop Gallery
March 7, 2008 – May 31, 2008

Sculptor Kathe Umlauf portrays animals of all sorts. Working from her observations at zoos, area farms, thoroughbred racetracks, and anywhere else she can be near animals, Umlauf uses her classical training in sculpture to capture their gestures, forms, and personalities in painted terra cotta and cast gypsum. The works range in scale from small to larger than life, and include horses, orangutans, mountain lions, goats, pigs, and dogs.

Umlauf began working in clay at an early age. Her mother was a professional potter, and Umlauf remembers coming home from school to sculpt in the studio. She later attended the Tyler School of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Millersville University, and Edinboro University, where she earned her MFA. She currently manages the Museum’s ClaySpace program at 1505 State Street. Although she has considerable experience in painting, she is drawn to clay for its immediacy, the instant response of the medium to the artist’s fingers.

Why animals? Umlauf holds that interaction with animals has the potential to make us more human. We see ourselves in animals; they “hold up a dull mirror” to us. But an advantage we have in relating to animals, as opposed to other people, is the animals’ lack of psychological masks. To Umlauf, an animal’s response is always genuine. So a person’s relationship with an animal is at the same time both distant because of our obvious differences, and yet close because of the animal’s genuineness. And people in turn have the opportunity to fully be themselves, abandoning their own psychological masks for a time, in the presence of animals.

Because animals do not have the ability to judge us, to hold us accountable for our actions, the choice is ours whether to help or hurt them. Umlauf considers this our opportunity to show ourselves as we really are, a chance to be “humane,” or perhaps all too human. She hopes that her sculptures—form and motion crystallized and held up for our notice—will lead us to reconsider what animals mean to us, as contact with them becomes more and more removed from our daily lives.