Lydia Ricci

On the way home from the annual Wayzgoose at Hamilton Wood Type Museum a few weeks ago, we stopped off at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, as we have many times before, but for the first time since the pandemic. Lots of good things to see, as usual.

Probably my favorite were the small, "messy, imperfect sculptures" of Lydia Ricci.

We went through the small exhibit of her work (which is combined with paintings by Sarah McEneaney) backwards, which meant we saw the video of her stop-frame animations first and had no idea what it was about.

Ricci places her miniature sculptures into brief, comedic situations with life-size objects, and the video on display showed them one after another. I tend to have little patience for videos that play in museums, but this one was worth watching all the way through.

After watching, we moved into the gallery to see her tiny sculptures displayed inside their plexiglass boxes. In a way, they were less enchanting that way, almost forlorn compared to their lively existences in the video. But it's hard not to appreciate the creative vision that goes into recreating these objects, at this scale, from the materials she uses.

You can see more (and better) photos and a few brief animations of the sculptures on the homepage of her website, and longer animations on this page.