Janelle and Audrey

John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres are best known for their collaborative plaster portraits of community members from the South Bronx. Cast from life and painted in vivid colors, these sculptures of artist friends, South Bronx neighbors, and area characters were often exhibited in neighborhood art venues or directly on the street, far from the center of the New York downtown art world. The artists' civic practice invites us to consider the artistic subjects typically worthy of attention, as well as the audiences traditionally granted access to works of art.

This three-quarter-length portrait of two young Black girls is a rare two-figure composition by Ahearn and Torres, and among their earliest cast sculptures. Skillfully rendered and brightly painted, it is full of beautiful details, from the skin tones of the subjects, which the artists have rendered with careful sensitivity; to the wrinkles in the clothing; to the real pair of eyeglasses worn by the sitter at right. To produce this work, Ahearn and Torres covered their subjects’ faces and shoulders in molding gel and then applied a layer of plaster-soaked bandages to create a rigid shell; the girls breathed through straws inserted into their nostrils until the plaster dried. The artists then filled the mold with plaster to make a positive cast, which was then worked and painted to create a lifelike wall relief.