I struggled for some time with what to do with this iron statue of a woman. I didn’t want to make a stereotypical image, so immediately I knew that bronze was not an option. Having studied quite a bit of theory at SAIC I was aware of issues of gender representation. The relationship between context and meaning that I had investigated in the Nandi pieces lead me to add another element to the iron woman. If I wanted to portray a strong women, making her gigantic by adding a miniature figure of a man might do that and what better figure than Rodin’s Age of Bronze. This also gave me a title for my sculpture. 

This is meant to be a humorous piece. I don’t think that women are better than men or that women should exert power over men. I do think that women and men should be given equal opportunities. I am an “equalist” rather than a “feminist.”

A woman wanted to buy The Age of Iron when it was on display at the Betty Rymer Gallery at SAIC. The gallery sitter relayed this information to me. The woman brought her husband to see the work. He hated it. She screamed at him that she would buy it anyway. They had a huge fight over it in the gallery. She never did come back to buy it.