I began in fits and starts. Over the next months, I built countless small maquettes, adding clay in places and scraping it away in others. I created Cleopatra as I had created myself, by adding life’s experiences and by chipping away at what I no longer needed to hold on to. 

           After narrowing down my choices to a few possible poses, I built wire armatures to support larger plaster of Paris models of The Death of Cleopatra. Should her head tilt toward her trailing arm, or away from it? A throne resting on curved legs collapsed under its own weight, so I did away with them in favor of solid sides decorated with griffins and front legs formed by...

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