Reflections on Recent Sculpture
November, 2003

My work, having evolved over two decades, is informed by surrealism, figuration, and modern art. Growing up female among four sisters, I bring to sculpture a skill in sewing and domestic attention that becomes something different when combined with metal skills and welding. Through experimentation I have developed a visual language that recalls something industrial, but also relates to the domestic. Working with material that is industrial evokes the future and technological progress, while domestic imagery of dresses and hand sewn coats implies ideas about nurturing what exists. Symbolic of the public and private life we navigate, the work stradles two worlds. The objects express a hopeful blending and different way of thinking.

In 1989 I began making sculpture with lace, spoons, heat vents, industrial fans, and flexible electrical conduit. I mounted these objects onto wood and painted the entire montage with a detailed painting recontexturalizing the objects themselves in relationship to a human figure. Later, I found a way to express the concept I was after more simply in free standing sculpture.

In 1998 I began stitching giant dresses and men's coats out of industrial aluminum mesh, having discovered that this material worked like a screen for images from a slide projector. The aluminum mesh evoked a sense of industry and at the same time, when used in a large scale, appeared as soft fabric. Lighting the sculptures with slide projections presented an opportunity to enhance the figure with another layer of meaning. This multi-media representation of the human form was very much a hybrid of the human figure with technological aspects. Made up of multi-layered representations, the medium worked well to express inner workings and identity ambiguity.

During the same time I developed the large video work, I also made sculpture of cast stone, in singles and multiples. They were portraits, often partly finished, sometimes cast with found objects embedded. In a recent exhibition at City Hall in Palo Alto the figures, "Child 1" were arranged in multiples on the plaza, suggesting crowds of strange, small people. Because they were cast in multiple colors, the installation suggested the multiple colors humans come in with a common thread of expression.
Working with experimental techniques, I hope to create a disorientation in order to challenge the perceptions of the world. Using a visual language of my own design, I rearrange reality for a more complex, symbolic reading.

Marta Thoma: Stretch
Curator statement by Beth McLaughlin

Giganticism is a creative device employed in fables such as Jack and the Beanstalk and Alice in Wonderland to evoke feelings of fear or fantasy. In Stretch, artist Marta Thoma explores this duality as she confronts the viewer with her colossal sculptures. As we stand dwarfed by the figures, are we fearful? Or do the giant forms incite feelings of whimsy and playfulness? Thoma's intent is not to answer these questions, nor does she give us any indication of the desired response. Rather, she uses scale as a device of disorientation, shifting our perspectives and challenging our perceptions of the world around us.

After losing her father to mental illness at an early age, Thoma turned to art-making and education to transcend her fears. She continues to reflect on her own childhood for inspiration in making work that elicits an intuitive response. According to Thoma, "I am constantly looking for what can be said about girls, childhood, and being human that is important, possibly profound. I look for what has been overlooked. My way continues to be through fantasy where reality is reshaped for more complex, symbolic and revealing storytelling."

Oakland Museum of California at City Center
October 16 - December 31, 2003