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It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

—Aesop, Greek slave & fable author (620 BC - 560 BC); The Jay and the Peacock

In her newest series Ivana Šrámková recycled, reimagined and restored a box full of inspiring but no longer wanted odds and ends collected over a lifetime by her mother-in-law, a well known Czech architect. The various bits and pieces of broken sculptures, stones and branches reemerged as the Little Birds—a tender small scale flock which easily carries the larger ideas that are the prerogative of the artist's work.

In this work she moves away from the geometric abstraction of her earlier pieces. Modeled in wax, the haptic surfaces of these small cast glass birds are instead informed by the artist's large-scale work for architecture in materials such as bronze and concrete. She compares the pieces to fables and delights in the anthropomorphic qualities of the bird. In them she successfully mines the vast array of human expressions and with a light hand, (one of the most enduring qualities of her work) manages to fill their small bodies with a monumental sculpture's worth of character.

Ivana Šrámková, recipient of the 1991 Prague Glass Prize emerging artist award, was a member of professor Stanislav Libenský's prominent last class, from which some of the leading figures of the 'new generation' of Czech artists have emerged. Šrámková's work has been exhibited in Europe, the United States and Japan. Her sculptures are represented in the collections of museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Lausanne, Switzerland.

©  Heller Gallery 2009

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