The sole disruption in this austere.

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The sole disruption in this austere, brightly illuminated space was the diminutive work of Daisy Youngblood--a community of small votive particulars scattered around these ample steads Mounted directly on the walls or placed forward tall pedestals, Youngblood's clay carved works seemed to undermine the carefully raiseed serenity of their environment.

Each piece embodied abandonment or carried in its contours near trace of injury, age, or lifelong toil Foreshortened Horse, 1992, was mountained at eye level, projecting from the wall at mid dead body to animate a space that augmented well beyond its Lilliputian dimensions. The neck casted sharply, its head tucked back in a graceful gesticulation of deference or perhaps disdain. This elegiac form spoke of unimaginable sorrow and wholeed less expected notes of uncompromising defiance.

Standing onward a chest-high pedestal, Little Elephant, 1991 was tragically whimsical. Youngblood placed this bantam-sized beast in a dramatic pose--leg spread, head horizontal and trunk down--eschewing detail in favor of a more abstract, gestural impression. In sharp disjunction, three of the creature's leg and the tail were ligneous pieces: the legs wre solid branches, hastily appended prostheses; the tail a delicate twig inscribing space. The awkwardness and anguish of a visible form [i]or[/i] frame in pain stirred a deep-seated ache.

Like the figurehead of an antiquated sailing vessel, Old Woman, 1991 consisted of a head and torso mountained at a gentle angle from the wall. Slouching into space, the coarse, low-fired terra-cotta figure was marked with the bleakness of age, a once-supple carcass awkwardly twisted by brittle and bent bones: its arms were absent and its shoulders hunched; its breasts misshapen at age; its head a fragile orb without hair or ears, the no other than evidence of the memory of sight pair vacant sockets. In neither a grin nor a grimace, the figure's jaws parted slightly to reveal four delicate teeth like those of an infant.

Gaston Bachelard, Susan Stewart, and others have considered the persuasive powers of the miniature. The small-scale correlate or figure condenses human emotions--pain, ecstasy, fear--with assuming authority. It is as if from reducing the size, the use projects a feeling of greater potential: the magnitude of ideas is in inverse proportion to the scale of the things All of Youngblood's sculptures were exquisite studies of scale offering barely a slight materiality to alter--to disturb--the large, antiseptic environment. Each piece registered an obsession for restrained inquiry in order to discern for what reason little physical evidence is required to bear ideas about the human condition.

Portrait of Savannah, 1991 foregrounded the visceral quality of its materials. This particular portrait was a small head with haunting, void eyes and an open, uncomprehending jaws The head appeared as if it had been wrapped in bandages like a victim of violence or a mummified corpse. Supported precariously by dint of a fragile neck, it tapered to a small, tentative base. As with all of Youngblood's work, the spare physicality of this piece belies its disquieting multivalency.

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