Review: Melissa Balch fills Moss+Mineral with organic, sensuous clay

Tacoma’s Moss+Mineral is usually filled with air plants and succulents, but this month the plants share gallery space with body parts made of clay. Oh, and breasts. Lots and lots of breasts: as shoes, as enormous sculptures, as clusters. But despite the sensuous forms, Tacoma artist Melissa Balch isn’t trying to be graphic. Rather, her sculpture is a calm meditation on the human body, and the psychology of how we perceive it.

Balch threw herself obsessively into ceramics between 2006-11, working daily before moving onto other interests. The intensity shows, combining with her deep passion for plants, meditation and alternative medicine, to infuse every piece with a profound regard for the body that’s challenging and peaceful.

In a central display case, ceramic shapes like organs (a liver, a double-heart) ooze pinky-brown or glisten with white glaze, opening gently into valves that seem to breathe. Another white organ nestles inside a baby-like flower of thin, pink-petal clay, a tiny heart with tiny hands reaching out of it. A dozen white porcelain breasts cluster like a cell structure, somehow both naive and accusing. Biomorphic protrusions, ebony-dark with an iron oxide underglaze, reach up like cacti fingers. Another breast rests perfectly inside a measuring spoon balanced on a cup — pure white, like a prescription.

The forms could be bizarre, yet somehow their unity renders them beautiful — inhabitants of another plane of thinking.

There are more: Small, lumpy, white spheres extruding from the wall, mottled liver-like organs, pendulous phallic gourds sprouting hairs or horns or a tiny, perfect woman. In the street window are enormous, balloon-like breasts made of white papier-mache, their tiny nipples a silent reminder of the meaning. Everything cohabits with the gallery’s spiky aloes and mid-century decor like a strange, harmonious planet of pale white bones, exotic plants and rich brown earth.

But it’s the shoes that really make Balch’s point loud and clear. A pair of Gaga-esque platforms has breasts for toes and soles; a pair of okobo (insanely tall sandals worn by apprentice geisha) is given silver-lacquered sides and delicate pink-opening flowers between the toes. With these, the interweaving of female sexuality and ideals of beauty reaches its surreal end-point.

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 1:19 AM with the headline "Review: Melissa Balch fills Moss+Mineral with organic, sensuous clay."