cover | Antler Figure 60” x 21” x 21” - Bronze opposite | Man with Dog 36” x 12” x 9” - Bronze above | Traveling Shoes 3” x 5” x 7½” - Bronze

DANCING WITH MORPHEUS

BETH CARTER

bdgny.com

Giant Standing Minotaur 77” x 22” x 23” - Resin | 3

4 | Flying Figure 60” x 36” x 24” - Bronze | 5

6 | Lion and Unicorn 30” x 23” - Charcoal and Pastel on Paper 55” x 16½” x 11”- Resin | 7Dreaming King

8 | Monkey and Hare 30” x 25” x 31” - Bronze Fox and Pheasant 28” x 9½” x 7”- Bronze | 9

10 | Bull and Rider 22” x 13” x 6” - Resin Mr. Doubledream 31½” x 9½” x 9” - Bronze | 11

12 | Leading the Giant 22½” x 7½” x 11” - Bronze �e Day Owl 50” x 38½” - Charcoal and Pastel on Paper | 13

B E T H C A RT E RBeth Carter’s sculptures, deeply rooted in mythology, are part of a genre

the artist describes as “magical realism.” There is something peculiar and

enchanting about her menagerie of minotaurs, winged creatures and

half-human forms. Carter first crafts her sculptures out of clay or wax and

consequently casts them into limited edition works in bronze or resin. She

emphasizes that her art is conceived in a deeply internal and contemplative

place; it requires a large emotional investment from her and this raw sensitivity

is evident in her works. Carter frequently accomplishes a rare feat in capturing

grief, vulnerability, whimsy and magic in one piece.

Her works often explore the nature of duality; whether it is the relation-

ship between beasts and humankind, vulnerability and power or the real and

the imagined, the artist cleverly juxtaposes conflicting ideas that the viewer,

alone, must reconcile. The distinct sense of melancholy present in Carter’s

art allows her creatures to be at once physically imposing and emotionally

vulnerable. Her series of thoughtful drawings in charcoal and conté

demonstrate this same interior need to explore sadness and the subconscious.

Carter’s unique body of work creates an alternate reality – one that invites the

viewer to partake in a journey to a strange, dreamlike world where the lines

between man and beast, reality and the subconscious and the possible and

impossible are no longer clear.

Beth Carter received her degree in Fine Art from Sunderland University in the

United Kingdom. In 1995, she was awarded 1st prize in the Northern Graduate

Show ‘95 at The Royal College of Art, London. Afterwards, she traveled to

Sri Lanka, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Gambia, Kenya and Tanzania to study

mythological sculpture; she plays with these classical precedents to create a

new genre that is all her own. Her work has been shown in the US and abroad

and appears in private collections throughout Europe, Asia and the US.

14 | Horsechild 37½” x 21¼” x 11” - Resin and Red Pigment | 15

16 | | 17

18 | �e Conjuror’s Horse 46” x 40” - Charcoal and Pastel on Paper Free Reign 32” x 22” x 14” - Resin | 19

20 | Standing Horse 17¾” x 5” x 4¾” - Bronze Kneeling Horse 47” x 19¾” x 23½”- Resin | 21

22 | Crowmask II 11½” x 14” x 7”- Bronze Messenger 19½” x 10¼” x 9½” - Bronze | 23

24 | Day Dreamer 34” x 9½” x 9½” - Bronze Wolf with Deer 28” x 11” x 9” - Bronze | 25

26 | Cat and Pigeon 37½” x 22” x 12½” - Resin Sleeping Dog 45” x 17½” x 24½” - Bronze | 27back cover | New York, West Broadway 39¼” x 31½”

28 | Minotaur and Bird 70” x 60” - Charcoal and Pastel on Paper Minotaur on Box 22” x 15¾” x 11” - Bronze | 29

30 | Minotaur Reading II 23” x 14” x 11” - Available in Bronze or Resin | 31

The hunch is a gesture of many implications. Free from culture and cohort, hunching over can indicate

shame, coyness, and introversion. The curtailed gesture may also be an expression of anticipation, of

waiting to jump up and aggrandize oneself. Beth Carter’s sculpture, the Reading Minotaur, falls somewhere

in the middle of this continuum. In a bronze state, he sits with his legs curiously dangling and his back

hunched over as his bull-head overlooks a tiny book in his hands. At the Gallery, one of the Minotaur’s

many homes, he is discernibly admired by the public –indicated especially by his tendency to be taken

home by seasoned and first-time art buyers alike.

The Reading Minotaur’s posture and size incite neither fear nor intimidation, but to coo at him the way

one does at a puppy would be condescending; and his crouch of introversion may turn into a crouch of

anticipation. Let the myths remind us that he has killed in the past. The public respectfully endears him

and those who procure him look forward to adorning their homes with two unlike qualities all people

admire but cannot seem to find in the same entity: warm curious unobtrusiveness and unmistakable

power. After all, Fraser Kee Scott once described the Reading Minotaur as, “he who crushed a king…

devour[ing] a book instead.”

I once asked a soft-spoken elderly woman her opinion regarding what it is that the Minotaur is reading.

She imparted, in so many words: “The Bible, of course.” Dante claimed the Minotaur was damned for his

violent nature; this woman believes he is mitigating that fate. After all, why would a gentlewoman want

a murderer that has not restituted his past in her presence? That same day, a young man walked into the

Gallery straight from his financial firm, and fresh from Wharton, and told me that the Minotaur was reading

Machiavelli’s The Prince. This is a feasible conjecture, since the myths claim the Minotaur has eaten kings.

This young baron must have seen a bit of himself in the Minotaur.

However, the most affixing notion is not from a lived older woman or from a well-read professional,

but from a child. “It’s a picture book with no words,” the youngest member of a visiting Japanese family

claimed. “He can’t read. He has a bull brain.” Touché. After all, it is his head that is of a bull and his body

that is human, not the other way around. After the child and I spent more time with the Reading Minotaur,

I started to understand why the first two visitors were off beam: If the Minotaur had no natural source

of nourishment, he did not devour man out of calculation nor evil, but out of survival. So it seems the

miniscule book in his resin hands is as revelatory as his pose.

People love the Reading Minotaur. He is enough of a human that we understand his body language, but

unlike us enough that he can transfigure as common and familiar a gesture as the hunch. What makes

him special though is that not only is he captivating, but constantly adopted by a variety of people. The

public’s endearment of the Reading Minotaur’s stance transcends him from commodity to a facilitator of

epiphany, divulging the inner needs of art keepers.

– Miko Carating

R E A D I N G M I N OTA U RR E V E L AT I O N S O F T H E

32 | above : � e Sandman 15” x 10” x 6½” - Bronze | below : Small King 13½” x 5” x 2½” - Bronze above : Minotaur Head 11” x 10” x 10” – Iron Resin | below : Minotaur Bust 6” x 4½” x 4½” - Bronze | 33

34 | Night Dreamer 34½” x 16” x 7½” - Bronze Boy Brave 23” x 8” x 4” - Bronze | 35

36 | �e Suitor 22” x 30” - Charcoal on Paper Carnival Figure 28” x 14” x 7” - Bronze | 37

38 | Fool 18½” x 6½” x 5½” - Bronze above : Blind Fool ’s Game 6” x 5½” x 2” – Bronze | below : Fairy on a Stool 6” x 5” x 3½” - Bronze | 39

40 | Bull with Flowers 14” x 27” x 7” - Resin above : Clockwork Elephant 7½” x 6” x 8” - Bronze | back cover : Standing Minotaur 47¼” x 22½” x 22½” - Bronze

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