Peg’s Sculpting History 

Beginning as a raku potter while holding to classic firing methods, Peg evolved into a figurative ceramic sculptor (1989-1999) across Virginia, Seattle, and Miyazaki to Kyoto, Japan. Raku’s blackened method of firing was an easy transition for casting in bronze. There’s something about the unpredictability and intensity of wax, molten metal, and fire. Appreciating the classics, she maintains traditional methods while using hand tools in her relationships with alabaster and limestone.

Peg gathered her confidence as a bronze sculptor during the casting course at the University of Tasmania (2008). She took quickly to alabaster during her studio carving mentorship in Culver City, Los Angeles (2017). Soon, she discovered fossilised creatures embedded in the Omaru limestone of New Zealand (2018) and learned to respectfully carve around them.

As for me, Peg says, the macabre bleeds into the sensual, just as clay and bronze bodies are tinged by fire. Raku firing offers predictable-unpredictability — some make it through fire and some don’t. Yet, clay bodies that survive are rendered more vulnerable through their porous transition. When tapped, raku-fired clay sounds flat while blackened hues get tinged in turquoise, which are breathtaking. 

Select Exhibited & Published Works

 Some Exhibitions

Chicago (Art in Response to Violence) Inaugural Keynote.

Phnom Penh (The Goethe Institute) Graceful Yet Stiff  (Jointly with Sayon Syprasoeuth).

Laos: Child victims of sex-trafficking (AFISIP, director Dr Didier Bertrand); figurative sculpting project with exhibition of children’s sculptures made with local clay.

Forever Landmines - Forever Gone Body Parts (Handicap International project under Dr Didier Bertrand), Still, millions of UXOs are uncleared in Laos.

Melbourne (Monash Asia Institute): Sculpture-Illustrated Academic Talk on ‘Love and Dread in Cambodia’.

Los Angeles (performance art), and elsewhere.

Some Books

Classic Morita Therapy: Consciousness, Justice and Trauma (Routledge Press, London, 2018) [moritatherapy.net]

Love and Dread in Cambodia: Weddings, Births and Ritual Harm Under the Khmer Rouge (University of Chicago Press, 2010). [Sculptural plates published alongside case studies]. This 7-year film ethnographic research in SE Asia coined the term Ritualcide in the genocide literature (see Wikipedia). Peg gave exert witness at the ECCC (Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Cambodia).  Her sculptures depict traditions and protective spirit agents — as captured in her alabaster ‘Garuda’.

Morita Therapy: Treatment for Anxiety-Based Disorder (Shinkeishitsu). Morita, S. (1998) (original text from 1928), LeVine, P. (Ed), Kondo, A. (Trans). State University of New York Press.

Some Chapters

LeVine, P. (2022). Ritualcide Under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia: Animism, Genocide and War Crimes.  The Routledge Handbook of Religion Mass Atrocities, and Genocide (Stephen Smith & Sara Brown, Eds), Routledge, London.

LeVine, P. (2017). Mass as Testimonial: Ron Mueck Unframes Genocide. Inaugural Triennial. National Gallery of Victoria. 66-15.