Mary Frank

Mary Frank's ceramic sculptures and paintings on glass and metal combine myths, omens, lion-women, glimpses of dreams. Rather than illustrating myths literally, the artist often makes figures that embody the myth-making urge. A terra-cotta Persephone swells with plenitude, but her body is a fragile shell, one concave arm flung back as if inviting embrace. Frank's ceramics, intentionally fragmented, resemble objects found on an archeological dig, yet they are distinctly modern. Herrera, biographer of Frida Kahlo, illuminates the sources of Frank's creativity in this beautifully illustrated biographical-critical monograph. Monoprints of lovers, dinosaur skeletons and male heads extend the artist's imaginative realm. Also here are her ``shadow papers,'' constructions with light-filled openings along the paper's cut edges, where actual shadows give a semblance of substance by mimicking plastic modeling. (Nov.)