Keith Edmier

Adonais, 2010 Two cast basalt human hearts in a lead case with silver lining Edition: 3

Keith Edmier first came to Graphicstudio in 2003 to develop a new process of casting basalt stone (lava) for the making of sculpture that became the core of a subsequent body of work that Graphicstudio produced including Cycas revoluta bubil [2003] and Cycas orogeny [2004]. In 2010, Edmier returned to Graphicstudio to continue and expand upon the use of volcanic materials for the making of sculpture.

Adonais is a new sculpture from a body of work titled The Modern Man-Demon, inspired by Mary Shelly’s classic work of literature Frankenstein, as well as the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia that would set off global climatic aberrations the following year, commonly known as “The Year Without Summer.” During the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley, along with Percy Bysshe Shelley visited Lord Byron at Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It was there that she conceived of and began writing a short story that would later be expanded into novel, Frankenstein.

Adonais takes its title from an 1821 poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who drowned in the Gulf of Spezia in 1822. He was cremated by his friends whereupon his heart was snatched from the funeral pyre by the explorer Edward Trelawney and given to the poet Leigh Hunt (Norman, 1955; Time, 1933). Shelley’s heart was given to Mary Shelley who treasured the organ between the pages of Adonais until she died herself. The heart, which by then had crumbled to dust, was finally buried with the remains of Shelley’s and Mary’s son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, in 1889. Adonais takes it form from the ancient tradition of heart burial. Common in the Middle Ages in Europe and initially a strictly religious rite, it later became associated with a sentimental, aristocratic, or family tradition.

Two human hearts, that of the artist and a female archeologist are cast in basalt stone using data derived from MRI scans made on the University of South Florida campus. One heart is captured in a contracted state while the other in a state of expansion. Together they form a portrait of a single heartbeat. The hearts rest in a case, cast in lead, with a cast-silver lining—materials traditionally associated with heart burial. The case is inspired by the “double heart urn” of the Emperor Karl VII and his wife Maria Amalie in the Chapel of the Miraculous Image in Altötting, Bavaria, created by the sculptor Johann Baptist Straub.

Keith Edmier’s art exists at the intersection of the personal and the public in work that mines our collective cultural consciousness. For example, in his works with Evel Knievel, Jackie Kennedy and Farrah Fawcett, Edmier references his own personal history and marks

GRAPHICSTUDIO in | Artfor Institute Research the popular iconography of a generation. His early experience as a fabricator of orthodontic appliances and later as a prosthetic special effects artist for Hollywood movies informs his exploration of new materials as well as his imagery. His plant sculptures address aspects of sexuality—the male and female functions of reproduction, renewal and rebirth.

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