Kate MacDowell and Surreal Sculptures

Kate MacDowell is an American artist that creates impressive porcelain sculptures that analyse the human beings inside the ecosystem and in particular their relationship with animals.

The main message is quite clear: we are destroying nature.
Her sculptures display human bones and organs that alternate to the animal ones, with these powerful visuals she brings people to think about themselves and their connections with others.
"In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops," MacDowell explained of her work. "They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones.

In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world.

In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats.

In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices," she continued.

Her aims come out clear and pass even through her cold sculptures of characters from fables, lost reigns, covered in snow that suddenly, but intentionally, broke in their gelid fragility, exactly like the relationship between us and the world surrounding us.