Artist Spotlight
Madison Polidoro
Madison is a fine artist and fabricator based in Philadelphia. Studying art since her formative years, and working in the fabrication industry for nearly a decade, she has dedicated her life to her expanding body of work, and accumulated a variety of fabrication skills. In her work she utilizes welding, forge/hotwork, machining, glassblowing, mold-making, traditional sculpture, painting, woodworking, kinetic sculpture, and more.
She sells her own work under the brand 10 Ton Fetus.
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In my own work I create figurative sculpture. The way I sculpt is very organic, I feel in my own world and these sculptures develop a life of their own, they inherit their own personality.
My main inspirations are the female experience, IVF and science, specifically biology. I like reading biology-based studies surrounding the body and the authentication of the body like gene modification, mapping, things like that. When I’m sculpting, I’m playing off that idea of genetic editing or modification. Science is a way I understand the world through an objective lens. And the body is a point of human connection.
I think that’s one way my work connects with MoA. MoA is about connection and community. I feel like my sculptures, in this weird way, connect people to an experience and a feeling that can bring people together over a similar interest - especially in this fragmented digital world where no one talks to each other.
Beyond biology, I’m also interested in climatology and how the climate and ecosystem is being altered by humans. The sculpture I’m working on for MoA (“The Skin Horse”) is definitely about that. It’s this idea of creating a being that is designed to survive basically an apocalyptic landscape. I spiraled off an idea from a study published on climate change as a result of human error and started imagining all these monsters that were created as livestock so that we, humans, could survive.
I experience “awe” in my practice, especially with these scientific readings. The newer developments that create these ethical questions inspire me and often have me taking a closer look at what already exists. I really like bugs for this reason. They’re like these monsters that already exist. There’s awe to be seen that we overlook every day.
Madison is dropping a new line of products soon on her website that includes prints, stickers and small sculptures derived from her larger fine art based work.
