Abstract Mother and Child
Gabriella Polony Mountain's work includes four major themes. The first three themes are clearly recognizable as the Cosmos, Nature, and Figural works with the fourth theme encompassing history, philosophy, and culture. In her life as an artist, Polony Mountain worked with many different medium including mosaics, weavings, sculpture, stained glass, and repousse. Sculpture is a three dimensional branch of the visual arts. In traditional forms of sculpture, the materials used were easily accessible and consisted of stone, metal, wood, ceramics. The process for creating sculpture is as varied as the materials used and include carving, modelling, molded, cast, welded. These days the sculptural form is one with fewer boundaries in terms of material and process.
In " Abstract Mother and Child," Polony Mountain depicts an abstract version on the traditional mother and child theme. The sculpture is comprised of three tiers with the top tier serving as the head of the mother and the central and lower tiers representing the body of the mother and child. In the top tier, a hole is drilled through to the opposite side, perhaps acting as the eyes of the mother. The central tier represents the space in which the child is cradled by the mother's arms. A hole is drilled here as well although not all the way through. Signifying perhaps the protection for which the mother figure offers the child. The lower tier represents the base or the feet of the mother figure. Each tier is adorned with Polony Mountain's familiar curvilinear lines and circular forms creating a gentle scene.