Martha Glowacki’s Natural History, Observations and Reflections Martha Glowacki’s Natural History | Page 26

Figure 10 . Kelloggs & Comstock , The life & age of woman . Stages of woman ’ s life from the cradle to the grave , 1848 , hand-colored lithograph , Library of Congress , Prints and Photographs Division .
This cycle is less linear than the traditional The life & age of woman . Stages of woman ’ s life from the cradle to the grave , ( 1848 ) suggesting that external interventions may offer new life , that beauty and symmetry is not natural but deliberate , and that rejuvenation is always possible ( Figure 10 ). These scenes suggest ways of controlling not merely describing nature . Working in a similar way , What Every Woman Ought to Know ( 2002 – 2003 ), is a cabinet that presents an historic view of the strictures that shaped women ’ s lives , from historic makeup and a dramatic and somehow dark model of a bustle , to photographs and documentation of physiological studies ( Figure 11 ). The form of the cabinet with its drawers suggests that these items are meaningful and sorted as traces or documents of important phenomena , and make the viewer acutely aware of how controlled the sense experience it offers may be . These wondrous things provoke curiosity about the authorship of its creator . Her point of view is represented through its drawers — in effect , it gives access to her own sense experience of the selected and created things . These cabinets could inhabit an historic interior , but their contents could only exist in the context of Glowacki ’ s exploration of the power of historic and scientific modes of meaning making . They offer access to a kind of sense impression that suggests an intuition about the artist and her take on the world , even as they make clear the limited and particular function of the cabinet as an analytical tool . 4
The scale of Glowacki ’ s work encourages viewers to use her sculpture — gazing through lenses , turning cranks , and opening drawers . Viewers look closely , touch , think , and empathize with historic thinkers who struggled with conveying sensory experience . The problem of
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