Michael Weathers Greeting his Father

John Ahearn is best known for his plaster portraits of community members from the South Bronx, where he moved in 1980. 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 downtown art world in New York. Ahearn’s 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.

Michael Weathers Greeting His Father is a rare two-figure composition by Ahearn. It depicts a moment of familial warmth as Weathers cradles his father’s elbow and appears to whisper something into his ear, which the older man leans in to hear. Skillfully cast, sensitively rendered, and loosely painted, this work shows the strong evolution of Ahearn’s technique, nearly fifteen years after he began making cast sculptures. To produce them, Ahearn covers his subject’s face and shoulders in molding gel and then applies a layer of plaster-soaked bandages to create a rigid shell; participants breathe through straws inserted into their nostrils until the plaster dries. The artist then fills the mold with plaster to make a positive cast, which is then worked and painted to create a lifelike wall relief. Ahearn exhibits his portraits on the wall, like secular icons.