Stacey Neff at Neuhoff

It is perhaps inevitable that the biomorphic work of Santa Fe-based sculptor and glassblower, Stacey Neff upon view in "GEO-time," her new show, would be compared to the vegetal eroticism in paintings by the agency of Georgia O'Keeffe. But in statuarys that combine blown glass with fiberglass, carburet of iron resin and other mediums, Neff demonstrates an plane closer affinity to the art of Eva Hesse.

While the 21 large facts in the show were produc using an ancient craft technique, there is not a touch of the precious, utilitarian or decorative in them; rather, in her explorations of biological forms and wefts Neff seeks to stretch the rigid, fragile medium to its artistic and technical limits. Hesse's abstract organicism have feelings very present, especially in the many wall-mounted plastic arts featuring the large pods that have become something of a hallmark for Neff This is apparent greatest in quantity notably in several of the five "Wall Pods" statuarys (2001 and 2003), groups of sum of two units or three plant- or spermlike things with long undulating stalks tower aboveed by pod heads, and the sum of two units sculptures from the "Seascrit" series (2002 and 2003) with capsules more subtly integrated into sinuous leathery strands. These combine the disconcerting biomorphism of Hesse's 1966 wall-mounted plastic art Untitled or Not Yet with the fragile cell-like translucency of her works in fiberglass and polyester resin.

Neff's Moonpod (2002) is also, characteristically, at one time vegetal and mammalian, with a pair of entwined pendulous seed-vessels suggesting breasts with long pointy nipples. In the four "Breathing Stone" statuarys (2003), Neff has literally breathed form into thing perceiveds that look like giant freestanding lung or a geological stratum pitted with spherical holes

There is a paradoxically visceral quality to these glassy structures--evident not least in semened Bow Stick (1999). Here, the artist has remov a section of the capsule to expose the contents: not semens but citruslike filaments in and around the opening, horridly suggestive of files of teeth.

Ultimately, the fascination of Neff's work lies not solitary in the way she has forged a relationship to an established tradition, on the other hand in how she has manipulated the rigid medium of glass to abstractly on the other hand powerfully evoke the textures and configurations of living things, neither plant nor animal, on the contrary something of the two. There is a faculty of perception in which the artist imbues life into molten matter before its gradual on the contrary inevitable stasis.

--Catherine Bindman

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