Milette Lanphere Ceramic Snarling Dog Wall Sculpture '03

A hand-built stoneware wall sculpture depicting the head of a snarling Boxer-type dog, mounted on a faceted hexagonal ceramic backplate. The mouth is thrown wide open — teeth individually modeled, tongue and throat glazed in vivid red — and the ears extend dramatically to either side. The hand-painted surface layers charcoal gray, earthy brown, muted green, and warm amber into a naturalistic, atmospheric finish. The eyes are treated with a high-gloss glaze that gives the face an unsettling lifelike intensity. The piece is hollow, lightweight, and designed for direct wall mounting.

The reverse carries the artist's winged "ML" cipher alongside the inscription "03," dating the work to 2003.

CONDITION

Good. No damage noted. Minor surface wear consistent with age. Red interior glaze remains vivid. Artist's mark crisp and fully legible. Please refer to all photographs.

DIMENSIONS

Overall: 3¼" H × 5¾" W × 4½" D — Weight: 10.8 oz. Wall mountable.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Milette Lanphere has spent most of her life in the Mesilla Valley of southern New Mexico, on a seven-acre menagerie outside Las Cruces — a working farm of horses, dogs, and the full, unhurried company of animals. For years she was also a licensed falconer, one of fewer than thirty active practitioners in the state of New Mexico, before setting that chapter aside around 2005.

What falconry gives you, above all else, is an education in anatomy. You learn how a creature is built — how it moves, where the weight sits, what the face does under stress. That knowledge does not leave you. It shows up in the clay.

The snarling dog rendered here is anatomically truthful in the way that only comes from years of close, patient observation — not only studied from reference, but known from life.

In her past lives, Lanphere was a member of the Mesilla Valley Fine Arts Gallery in historic Mesilla and the Potters' Guild of Las Cruces, through which she participated in the Guild's acclaimed Fire & Fiber biennial — a collaborative exhibition pairing ceramic artists with fiber and mixed media practitioners, staged at the Branigan Cultural Center and subsequently traveled to the Deming Art Center. Her collaborator in that show was Suzanne Kane, a Las Cruces-based sculptor whose work is held in the permanent collections of the New Mexico State Capitol, the Archie Bray Foundation, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and the Las Cruces Museum of Fine Arts, among others. That Lanphere was paired with Kane speaks well of the regard in which her work was held within the Las Cruces arts community.