TWU Sculptural Ceramics 2012: Anastasia Gabriel

Christa Assad, Jessica Hess

Christa Assad has collaborated with illustrator Jessica Hess, in this work called Grey Girls, which is the work I selected as an example of digital hybrid. Assad is a contemporary potter whose work is primarily utilitarian and this is her recent sculptural work. Grey Girls is a grouping of spray cans and house-paint cans (all are painted black, white and gray) with images of nude women sporting rooster heads with graffiti tagging in the background. Assad and Hess combine lowbrow graffiti tagging art with porcelain ‘pedestal’ art. The stylized rooster heads are reminiscent of cartoons or comic books, which are digitized images. The simplified line drawings of the women’s bodies, which look like the images used on truck mud flaps along with the graffiti tagging floating on the background of these cans is a form of low-tech digital art. I found their work satirical in nature, while making a social commentary on modern society.