visit to Isabelle Albuquerque’s studio overlooking LA’s MacArthur Park feels a bit like an archaeological excavation, with clues to her process and inspirations scattered about. Tacked to the walls are images of the Wicked Witch of the West, Classical Greek sculpture, and a painting of a victim of the Salem Witch Trials. Several cast wax feet, in shades ranging from ivory to amber to chocolate brown, are neatly arranged on low shelves, above which hang three Shaker brooms. Family photos of her mother, the artist Lita Albuquerque, her grandmother, and great-grandmother—all Sephardic Jews from Tunisia—are laid out on a table in preparation for an upcoming monograph. In the center of the room, there is an apparatus somewhere between an exercise bench and bondage harness that Albuquerque uses to perfect the pose she will take for a bronze sculpture she’s
