See this now: Chris Weaver’s “Over Burdened Jackalope”
To evade capture, jackalopes are said to mimic human speech and timbre — when, that is, they don’t go on the offensive, goring the tender groins of gullible hunters. Such are the contradictions that inform Chris Weaver’s “Over Burdened Jackalope,” a witty ceramic ode to this elusive, apocryphal creature. Part of the solo exhibition Searching for Meaning, Searching for Form, now at Rockhurst University’s Greenlease Gallery, it shows Weaver (who owns Wilson Farm Studio in Prairie Grove, Arkansas) successfully bending broad mythology to unique new purpose.
Jackalope origins date as far back as the 16th century, cross many cultural borders (from North Africa to the American West) and combine bizarre fantasy with disturbing reality (the Shope papilloma virus causes horn-like tumors to grow from infected rabbits’ faces). And though an air of levity has long surrounded the animal, Weaver digs deeper into the fable — and, in this sculpture, builds on the animal itself to show us what he’s found.
Warm red hues and a seemingly expert working knowledge of hare anatomy draw the viewer close to the antlered animal. Atop an overturned clay pot the beast stands, burdened by the weight on its back — an old adobe village, whose labyrinthine brick roads and terracotta roofs Weaver has glazed to reflect a properly weathered patina. (The ready-made nature of the pot — which retains some of its intended function, as a vessel for containment — nicely aligns with Weaver’s storytelling, his pointing to creative solutions that evolve from relevant objects.) Walk around the other side of the sculpture and you see what resides under the pot: eight bearded men, garbed in floor-length white tunics. As the jacklope crouches under the village, it also houses the origin of his own birth: those men, taking shelter from the weather and finding entertainment in tall tales. Weaver has clearly spent more time sculpting the animal and the village than the misshapen men, but refinement of those statues is secondary to the layers of history he has assembled. “Over Burdened Jackalope” makes a physical display of oral history, complete with the obligatory fire around which the first stories might have been imparted.
Appropriately, the invented creature has here become larger than life. Humans build their homes and stories on the back of cultural mythology. Weaver’s jackalope is both past and present, and its emphasis on our unified suspension of disbelief delights.
