vanessa german quote regarding ET AL … sculpture

I had the wonderful and unexpected opportunity to chat with vanessa german on the phone yesterday and was able to ask her some questions specifically about the work that we have on view in the museum now. I wasn’t able to record our conversation, but took notes, and was able to jot down some direct quotes.

I asked vanessa about the birds on the heads of the figures and what the symbolism might be and she pointed out that one figure doesn’t have a bird but instead an angel  figure that represents the muse of love – a love that is all encompassing, love that is for the wholeness of your being (your strengths, fears, joys and sorrows) that covers all of the figures.

For the birds, she said that as beings that are part of the natural world they are totally aligned with their insticts and take flight with full sovereignty and as creatures of flight they experience a kind of freedom that others don’t. She said “these are children who made it possible for other children to soar.” 

Lastly she noted that birds symbolize liberty, and she quoted abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher “Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.”

Henry Ward Beecher – Wikipedia

vanessa german sculpture now on view at the Nerman Museum

We are so excited to now have a work by the amazing artist vanessa german on view in the museum’s second floor galleries. The work, titled ET AL, or The Child Plaintiffs as Power-figures: Courage and Play, Love and Hope, Grace and Compassion, Will and Might, Serenity and Music, Light and Joy, Warrior and Intellect, Creativity and
Vision, is from an exhibition that reflects on the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Topeka court case.

That exhibition, CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love and Reckoning, was commissioned by ArtsConnect and considers the legacies of that 1954 Supreme Court case declaring segregation in schools unconstitutional. Additional selections from this exhibition are on view at the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University, the
Brown v. Board National Historical Park Site, and the Great Overland Station, all in Topeka, through 2024.

Learn more about vanessa’s work:

For vanessa german, ‘Citizen Artist,’ Creativity Is a Matter of Survival – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

We are still working on getting the label on the wall (the installation was just completed late yesterday!), here is a PDF of that:

vanessa german wall label (PDF)