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anthony ulinski
Reliquaries The making of reliquaries—vessels for sacred objects, relics and talismans—is a craft practiced in almost every culture. My reliquaries are shield-shaped wall cabinets with carved and painted exteriors and compartmentalized interiors.
Carved hardwoods, bent laminations, traditional joinery, blown glass mirror, acrylic paint. By tradition, reliquaries are supposed to protect their owners’ most treasured objects during life and in the afterlife. Often they take the form of fearsome creatures—thus, in this piece, the abstracted form of an alligator. The textural carving was done with gouges and parting tools.
Urns In 1995, following the death of a close friend, I began a series of funerary urns. Initially, these were wooden vessels decorated with Fijian-inspired intaglio, a technique by which painted surfaces are carved in patterns that reveal the natural wood below. I have also used paper in these constructions. In the paper urns, paper is laminated over cane armatures, then painted, a technique I adapted from Japanese lantern-making.
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