In the barbershop or waiting for the ear. (2020) Original Clay Sculpture by Elya Yalonetski

This is the most elaborate piece in this collection so far, and the most personal.
My grandfather was a barber in a small town that changed countries more often than it changed its main street. From Austria-Hungary to Poland, to the Soviet Union, to Nazi Germany, back to the Soviet Union, then to Ukraine. The same cobblestones under different flags, the same chairs in the same shop. But not the same hands and heads.
He died too early. I have only a handful of memories of him, and an enormous amount of room left over for imagination, trying not to think about darkest days of the history but to see the reflections of the light in the shiny gloss of his polished scissors. This sculpture is what filled that room.
That light is also shining in bright turquoise eyes I have given to both of my characters. They are the eyes I imagine looked down at small heads all day long. Around his neck he wears a soft purple scarf with a blue patterned knot, the small flourish of a man who took pride in his trade. In red-striped trousers and dark shoes, he is half craftsman, half gentleman, exactly the figure a small grandchild would remember as enormous. The customer sits beside him on a low wooden stool, half-shaved, half-dreaming. A white cloth is draped over his shoulders, paint-streaked and lived-in. His head has been worked over by the comb already, the soft brown waves on one side still uncut, the other side bare and gleaming. In his eyes is that particular faraway look people get in the barber's chair, somewhere between trust and absence. His arms are bare, and on his skin I have drawn tattoos in iron oxide, the old ceramic pigment that fires into a soft russet brown like ink on skin. A rose. A bird. The small private pictures a man carries with him.
And then, the dog. A small dog sits at the barber's feet, ears forward, mouth slightly open, eyes turned upward. I love the dog more than anything in this piece. He is waiting, with the bright patient hope dogs have, for the customer's ear to fall. In every barbershop dog story I have ever heard, this is the role of the dog. He has been promised an ear before, and he expects an ear again. He has all the time in the world.
There is something about a barber that is almost sacred in a small town. The barber sees you when you are tired, when you are getting married, when you are going to a funeral, when you are nervous, when you are vain. He sees the back of your head, which no one else does. He has his hands in your hair. You close your eyes and trust him. My grandfather was that man for his town, but I never got to sit in his chair. So I built it. This is a one-of-a-kind sculpture, more elaborate and more layered than my smaller pieces. It's reflected in the price too.

Have a nice day and stay tuned

Materials used:

clay, engobe, glaze

Details:

• Clay sculpture on Other
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 14 x 28 x 10cm
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Naive
• Subject: People and portraits

Tags:

Featured by our Editors:

• Best of August