Split a piece of wood and I am there...

Where I Stand is the second body of work Laura Facey has delivered since 2006. While her October 2006 show The Everything Doors, at the Institute of Jamaica, was a tour de force of poetry carved from wood--a series of coherent, composed botanical meditations--her December 2008 show is more of a collection and display of recent work, mounted in her home, an idyllic cottage set in the cattle-studded fields of Mt. Plenty, St. Ann. 

The botanical theme still intervenes in her work and can be found in the exquisitely carved, scattered fragments of Blue Rose, 8 by 8 feet in diameter, whose multiple petals rise up from the floor of the central room of the house; The petals are nicked and stained a deep maroon with hints of indigo. Several other panels also bear fluidly rendered images of the ambient plant life.  Here a swollen banana blossom droops downwards; there a frieze of coconut palm tops emerges darkly from a narrow pane of wood, the wind almost audibly whistling through sharply incised palm leaves (Wind of Time). Poinciana petals rise like drops of blood from the surface of a plank of cedar. 

The works may roughly be divided into wall pieces and free-standing pieces such as the two magnificent thorn thrones carved from cedar: Queen and King Macka.

With circular backs, like two tree trunk halves with their insides hollowed out and a slab inserted for a seat, what is stunning about these chairs is their meticulously carved outer surfaces. While King Macka bristles with raised thorn-like projections, chain mail carved from smooth cedar, Queen Macka's back resembles the shell of a tortoise with large irregular oval bumps all over it. They would be fitting seats for President Barack Obama and the American First Lady Michelle Obama, armoured thrones of stately, arresting elegance . 

The thrones face a very large mandala or wooden shield-like structure on the wall shaped like a square lattice with semicircular segments arching out from its four sides. The word GRACE is reproduced on each arch, facing inward, and the square panel is intricately carved into a tracery resembling branching vines or worm tracks, surrounding a double central motif with circular loops (copied from pieces of fret work found under the house at Mt Plenty). The size of this work (10ft x 10ft) belies the delicacy of its traceried surface. 

Peaks, Summits or Horns, another series of floorworks, is a set of wooden tetrahedrons of varying sizes and heights, their geometrical shapes interrupted by the searching line leading to their apexes. The pinnacles resemble the tips of budding plants pushing through the ground in their search for sun and light. Loosely assembled together these beautiful smoothly planed sculptures suggest herds of hills, their slanting forms fervently stretching upwards.  

Fervour is a good word to use in connection with Facey’s work. While the force that drives her to produce such eloquent, graceful sculpture is a spirituality bordering on the religious the final product is free of any overt Christian reference. In the past her fascination with the idea of stigmata would lead Laura to carve representations of the wounded body of the crucified Christ such as the enormous gilded Christ figure carved out of Styrofoam that she produced a few years ago. Now she imaginatively and fluidly renders the stigmal (stet) by depicting the pistils of flowers and blossoms.  

Where I Stand and The Everything Doors, the last two exhibitions of her work, suggest a major paradigm-shift in Facey-Cooper’s aesthetic practice. Describing the latter as ‘exceptional in every sense of the word’, Veerle Poupeye noted in her Jamaica Journal review of the installation that the Institute of Jamaica show made an unusually cohesive visual and conceptual statement.  

This shift away from the human body towards plants and their inner lives is the outcome of an extremely fruitful and symbiotic relationship with Melinda Brown, the Australian-born sculptor who moved to Jamaica in 2005. Brown who curated both shows from concept to installation has been a major influence on Facey-Cooper. She actively suggested the new direction Laura would take by showing her that she could draw directly on the planks of wood piled up in her storehouse instead of drawing on paper and then translating her designs in wood. Helping her execute her ideas and finish and polish her pieces was the crew of young men she trained, the chief artisan being Jeffrey Hudson, followed by Kemar Davidson, Jamar Mclean and Norris Rhoden. This was the main support crew Facey-Cooper used in both shows. 

Make botanical portraits Brown urged, and Laura ran with the idea. The synergy between them flourishes even though Melinda does not share Laura’s religious worldview. It’s quite possible that Brown’s idea of carving the giant cedar planks resonated strongly with Facey-Cooper. 'Split a piece of wood and I am there' Christ is reputed to have said in the Gospel of Thomas.  

It was Brown’s enthusiastic reaction to the initial set of peak-like sculptures Laura produced that inspired the body of work that would constitute her second show. Despite the considerable variance in their interpretation of Laura's carvings the two artists enjoy a mutualism which has benefited each in their practice. With her feminist outlook Brown deemed  the peaked structures bullhorns that Minoan virgins would grab and vault over in a somersault to land feet first behind the animal; Laura, on the other hand, saw them  as peaks reaching for divine heights rather than bull-horns. The variance in the way they see the work is reflected in the title, Peaks, Summits and Horns. 

Punctuating the show like quotation marks were the series of Arrows made from cedar and furniture fragments. Inward Arrow, Fat Arrow, Bold Arrow, Proud Arrow, Final Arrow. These were smaller works, looking like plump, rounded arrow-heads bracketing slats and spindles from antique furniture, recycled into whimsical, sperm-like ejaculations. The melding of aged furniture parts with smooth sensuously finished cedar arrowheads introduces a hybrid element missing in the purity of form found in the other sculptures. Laura was inspired to produce the Arrows after seeing the 2008 Martin Puryear retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Like Puryear Facey’s work conveys  power and mystery arrived at via organic forms and technical virtuousity. 

Whether as viewers we want to take it on or not, the titles of her sculptures bear witness to the religious spirit which animates Laura Facey's work: the Rosicrucian Blue Rose, the thorny thrones, the Grand Peak and the smaller peaks, The Sadness of Mary...on the other hand it might equally be said that she is channelling the natural mystic that Bob Marley sang of, that ancient fecund spirit that has always lived in the island of Jamaica. 

Annie Paul

Kingston, January 22, 2009