Skinny Totem

Much of Jean Kadmon’s sculpting is totem-like. This stems from a great collection of South Sea Island art in the Israel Museum, and also from a Canadian Coast totem pole that towered in her girlhood next to the Natural History Museum in City Park Denver. She would ride her bike to the park, gaze at the totem pole, and then enter the museum. The director, a specialist in mineral crystallization of meteorites, would show her tarred Los Angeles remnants of extinct mammals, and allow her into back rooms where dinosaurs were put together. The bronze 19cm tall “Skinny Totem” is an obvious illustration of such early imbueing, but so are the Vacant Lot Characters and Spoon Man... Wild spring-dried grain stalks in Jean's Jerusalem garden are background to the photograh.