Seeker
Painted bronze and canvas, last revision 1982, 26" x 9" x 32".
A myth credits the invention of drawing to a Corinthian woman named Dibutade, daughter of the potter Boudate, who traced the shadow outline of her lover on the wall before he went off to war. In graduate school, I researched Carl Jung, trying to justify my emerging fascination of portraying figures with their shadows. He defined the shadow as a part of the unconscious personality representing "unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of the ego - aspects that mostly belong to the personal sphere and that could just as well be conscious."3
Shadows have always fascinated me. As a child I played shadow tag at the bus stop. As an adult I chase my own shadow across my workroom walls. Like Dibutade's tracing, my sculptures are attempts to give shape to lessons and events I want to remember as I move on into the future. But through the act of sculpture I chase Jung's shadows, seeking to more fully understand my unknown.
Janet Geib Pretti
