Headless Nude Women of the Apocalypse? Artists Lives
Artist lives are not what people think. Here are some sculptures that I made. It's Raw Clay of a new women and I want to just to talk about my development as an artist and as a sculptor.
Eve Hennessa
7/14/202610 min read
Clay Figures-My Sculpture and Artists Lives
Here are some figure studies in clay, which I still have. They are still raw clay. I spent many years studying the figure through classical art training.
My degree was also in sculpture. Sculpture really helps with drawing because you are looking at things in three dimensions.
Should I call them The Headless Nude Women of the Apocalypse? That’s pretty catchy. 💘
This website and this blog post give me a place where I can really talk about all of my art, my whole life, everything I’ve done, what I was thinking, and what went into it. I realize that this gives people a much better feel for art—and for my art in particular.
I started making art when I was probably in the second grade. When I was 12 years old, I took pottery classes. They were adult pottery classes. I was also in adult painting classes. That was a really wonderful thing my parents did for me. Kids do great in adult classes as long as they are well-behaved and genuinely want to be there.
I have been working in art classes since I was 12 years old. I went to the University of Southern Maine, where I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in sculpture, specifically ceramics. At the age of 23, I was a professional potter—or what we called a production potter. Then I went to Mexico City and studied for a master’s degree in sculpture, but all along, I was also painting and drawing.
I took this fantastic class that combined figure study, sculpture, and drawing, and it really changed my life. The teacher was brilliant. She taught us how sculpture trains you to think in three dimensions and how much that can improve your drawing. Many of the greatest figure artists were also sculptors.
I always worked very hard, studying drawing class after class, session after session. I took years of life drawing and studio work. It’s really extremely hard, and it takes a very long time to become good at it. My figures may not be like Michelangelo’s, but there are very few people who can actually do this.
I’m bringing it up because I want
to eventually bring figurative work
back into my art. Actually,
Hawa Cat is a figurative work.
Figurative just means it’s a human
or animal. It means some kind of figure.
When I went to art school, there was
still a lot of emphasis on classical training.
You needed to know how to draw and sculpt, but you also had to learn all the tools and techniques: wood construction tools, carving, casting, mold-making, model-making, and more. Now it would be very different. I think technology has advanced so far that, while a lot of people still do classical training—and it will, of course, come in and out of vogue—fewer and fewer people know how to do it or teach it.
I’ve spent several decades doing abstract work on paper, which I really love. But after my brain injury in 2020, I started doing digital art, partly because I had become a tech geek—specifically, a blockchain aficionado—and was making NFTs. But I was doing digital art, and my art was not the same. It was COVID. I had a brain injury. I completely changed. It was really a different phase of my life.
I will never know whether something happened in my brain or whether it was simply a different time. I had a really great show in Chicago, and they gave me a penthouse overlooking the lake. My paintings were expensive, and I was this amazing success for a few minutes. But that lady, Carrol Jones, was stealing my art. She wasn’t paying me and was treating me like dirt. It was such an awful time that I realized, you know, am I just trying to make cool stuff that gets me into a top gallery?
No. That was never my desire. Although it would still be great!
My core aim as an artist is to transcend and create something timeless.
So even though my paintings were really amazing at that time—they were very large, figurative, and had a lot of depth and meaning—I realized that the world really couldn’t give a crap, and the art world was completely corrupt. I have always been a purist, even in the way I eat and live. I like things in their essence. I don’t like excessive noise, and I don’t like complicated philosophies.
To me to be an artist is the purity of creating something new putting something new into the world that has never been there before and that changes it in a good way.
I don't want to bring in dirty things here or corrupt things here or things here just a clutter up the space. I think of the world like that like a big architectural design and what am I bringing to it?
I could crank out a lot of work, and if you make a lot of things that looks the same and brand yourself well, you can do well, but this was just never me. I could kind of fake it enough to get some good sales here and there. I wasn't really faking it. I mean my work was authentic. It was real, but I was just focused in creating myself as a product. In reality, that's what I'm doing right now. I need to create myself as a product, but one that is really who I am and I feel like if I keep writing, I will start to make sense and I can be very easily branded as me and sell my paintings a lot for a tons of money. I've always felt they were worth a lot. I always felt that my work was unique, authentic and beautiful. And I have been acclaimed sometimes by our critics or collectors, but mostly I've been laying low because I hate to talk about myself.
I have always worked very hard to improve to think to create something I do tons of experimenting and after that show I had in Chicago I really just let myself go as an artist. Even as a human, that's how I am and even though I'm a pure, I don't let myself go and just do a bunch of random stuff, but I also don't constrain myself too much to produce.. sometimes I try to do that and it just never works for me. I'll get really bored or I just can't.. I just have that personality that just refuses to conform.
But that's also why I'm happy I do what I want within reason. I don't do things that will hurt me, but I experiment a little and I realize that the only method of life that's gonna work for me is me doing me. That's a great revelation and I think it's true for most people. Of course we have to make ourselves to do the hard stuff like build websites or contact people who are gonna treat us like garbage to see if they will be interested in what we do, but I don't have to make millions of dollars or be the most famous although I would like to.
I watched too many artists work too hard just to die poor. I decided a long time ago. I wasn't willing to work that hard although I work extremely hard. But I have to get sleep and being poor is really not fun after the age of 40. It's super scary and when I was an idealistic art student, I didn't consider that.
When we were idealistic art students, we were reading all these books about famous people with spectacular artists’ lives—or at least that’s how the books portrayed them. Even Van Gogh’s suffering is so exciting and dramatic that you want to be him. That’s insane. That guy just suffered and suffered and suffered. What people don’t understand is that Van Gogh came from a family of art dealers. It wasn’t just one particular person. Without those family connections, his work would have been thrown in the trash when he died, as much of the work of great artists is, never to be admired or understood.
I guess that’s why I’m communicating what I do. I really don’t want my work to be thrown in the trash. The other reason is that if I can make some money because people understand what I do and find it interesting, that would be so fantastic. I know I always talk about money. It’s because you can live without art!!
Okay, so I studied sculpture and drawing. I became a sculptor. I love sculpture, but sculpture really just wasn’t doable. You can only fit so many sculptures in your tiny apartment, and it’s much harder to sell. I was not good at selling. I’m, like, anti-selling. Often in my blog posts, I want to complain and belittle myself, and that’s really bad for selling because everybody likes confidence and positive vibes.
Also, figurative art is very hard to sell, and sculpture is hard to sell. What you find when you get out into the art world is that it takes a lot of money to make art, and being some Bohemian person with no connections and bad sales skills is a recipe for starvation. Abstract art is beautiful, and people like it. It’s more neutral. I love abstract art, but the reason it’s everywhere is that the conditions are better for it. It’s also a lot easier to do and can be very quick. That doesn’t make it less good. These are just factors.
What I think confidence; is realtive. Confidence is great if it’s natural, but a lot of it is just hiding emptiness and fear. I think we’re all pretty much the same deep down. If I weren’t confident, I never would have made a sculpture and shown it to someone. I mean, most people don’t dare to do the things they want to do. Many people don't dare to do something that was not prescribed for them.
The fact is, I worked a lot with clay. I worked a lot with the sculpture, and the figures is figurative clay sculpture.
As a ceramist, I had a big problem
because I like clay in the wet form.
There is a stage when clay is drying
called “leather hard.” It’s not wet.
It’s not dry. It’s moist, but it’s strong,
but it’s not powder yet. I love the clay
when it’s leather hard. To be a
ceramicist who is good, it takes literally
decades and an intense amount of
knowledge that you could not even
imagine. And I guess if you have tons
of money, you don’t need the knowledge
because you can just buy the top kiln
and the best glaze, or get a master glazer to
do it.
it takes a lot of trial and error until you
get your piece the right size. So many things
can go wrong! It takes many years of
trying it again over and over to get to
my level. There are always a few people
who are naturally gifted, but the rest of
us have to labor at it intensely. But I
loved it.
That's why I have these raw claw figures pieces. I've never fired them. Fired means put them in the kiln or oven. When you fire clay, it's shrink and it comes out like 20% smaller. So it's wet and then when it dries, it's a lot smaller and then when it shrinks it's a lot smaller so when you make any kind of out of clay. You really need to make it 40% larger than what it's gonna come out to.. so these pieces if I fire them, they're just gonna be a little hard to pieces. So I had them in a box for 20 years now they're sitting there on a table.
Since I rarely sold my work, it’s all stored away, taking up a lot of space! I was practically a hermit for a long time. That gave me so much time to do my work, and nobody ever saw it.
I’m always on to the next thing, and that’s part of being an artist. You want to create something new. You don’t want to spend your time talking about what you did five years ago, networking, or practicing your sales skills. But as an artist and entrepreneur, you need about twenty different expert skills: sales, marketing, networking, social skills, carpentry, internet and tech skills, writing, speaking, fashion, and all the technical skills required to create the work itself. Then somehow you have to put all of those skills together and make it work.
I should make more of the things that were selling for me, but now I don’t want to anymore. I started doing landscapes and cats, although I still love abstract work and I would still do it. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.
I love 2026 because we can create our own brand in our own way, and we don’t have to please the gatekeepers. I mean, if you do things the accepted way that most people like and value, it will go a lot easier for you, but it’s not necessary. I was just so stubborn and could never suck up to people, sleep with them, or even be charming all the time. I could not do that. I couldn’t do whatever you’re supposed to do to get somewhere in this world. But now we have AI and the internet. It’s fantastic.
My philosophy of art has always been that a person should have something worthy to communicate, hone their techniques and skills, and, if they’re lucky, communicate something meaningful to other people.
I will be communicating a lot because I feel like I have lived a life that is highly unique. I've been thoughtful, interesting, introspective, fun, and very free in a way, yet always drawn to truth and clean living—not a profligate. I think I have something to say, so I will be here writing to you.
Follow me on all my socials, and please leave a comment if you like my work. You can also shoot me an email or text
Basically, for most of my life, it has just been me and my work communicating with each other. Some people have that kind of intimate, wordless relationship with their pets; with me, it was art. I'm fully committing to revealing my thoughts, for better or for worse.
I am fully committed to living in the world with other humans, no matter what the cost, and to communicating, even though it is easier for me to create my own imaginary world full of fun and beauty.
Additionally, I have hundreds of pieces of artwork which have never seen the light of day and I will eventually put many of them here.
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