This piece was from the period when I created standing figures in clay working from live models. These three women were friends, students at SUNY Purchase, and enjoyed working together to develop their respective poses and the overall composition.

The piece derives from three specific art-historical references, fused into something contemporary.

The first, from the title, is from a long tradition of Three Graces sculptures dating from the Greeks and in particular the 19th century works by Canova. The Three Graces, from mythology the three daughters of Zeus, were usually depicted with interlocking arms embodying their gifts to humanity: Joy, Beauty and Elegance or Grace.

The next reference was to an iconic proto-feminist painting titled Gabrielle d’Estrees and One of Her Sisters, by an unknown painter in the French School of Fontainebleau. The story is that Gabrielle, mistress to King Henry IV of France, had recently conceived and this nipple-pinch was a sort of celebration of her sister’s fertility and the advantages that might flow to them all from this propitious event.

The third art historical reference was personal- I had been visiting the Chicago Institute of Fine Art, in the ancient ceramics wing, and noticed a 7th century sculpture of a girl in Central Asia. The girl was applying makeup, which the curators’ text suggested was a new thing available from the Middle East to people who might have lived along this Silk Road trading route. The sculptor had chosen to sculpt a young woman doing something contemporary, the hip young 7th century woman. What was trending for young women today, I wondered in 2011 when I conceived the work. What might provide a snapshot in cultural time for some future person to smile at? While by now people of all ages stand around in public peering at their phones, it was then something that mostly younger women seemed suddenly to be doing, checking on “the facebook” or texting friends. Computer-designing and 3d-printing the phone element added another new-to-early 21st century aspect to the piece.

The piece itself was a complex achievement to get the three clay figures to stand, interlock and survive the various steps of drying, shrinking, firing, glazing and reduction in the raku process.

Note that a related piece of mine from the same period, Nursing Mother with Smartphone, is in the permanent collection of Museo d’Arte Contemporaneo in Catania, Sicily.