“…she hastily threw the eleven coats of mail over the swans, and they immediately became eleven handsome princes; but the youngest had a swan's wing, instead of an arm; for she had not been able to finish the last sleeve of the coat.”

 —The Wild Swans, Hans Christian Andersen (after the Brothers Grimm)

Throughout her career Rona Pondick’s art has straddled the line between seductive and repulsive.  Cat, part of her most recent body of work, fuses human features with an animal body to create a sculpture that acheives a dreamlike melding of human, beast, and steel.  Making these hybrid forms allows Pondick to combine traditional sculptural modeling and casting with rapid-prototyping technology (converting 3D computer models into physical models). These bizarre beings address self-portraiture (she casts her own body for the human components), anxieties about genetic engineering, and are even evocative of  children’s fairytales in which human and animal are sometimes magically mixed.

Rona Pondick (American, born 1952), Cat, 2005,stainless steel. Purchased with funds given by Ruth and Jacob Bloom and with Museum Purchase funds, by exchange, 2007.30

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