MIT owns one of the spiders and several are privately owned by Washingtonians, but this indisputably American artist is more visible in Europe than in the United States. Allegedly a very private, but very charming woman, she adheres to a rigid daily schedule of work in her Brooklyn studio and in her home in the Chelsea section of New York. Photographs show her as a beautiful, rather pensive child, a vigorous art student, a sophisticated woman and a stunning older presence. In 1968 she posed for Robert Mapplethorpe carrying a sculpture of a penis, prior to his demonization by the U.S. Congress in 1989, so her picture was seen by the huge crowds that flocked to the subsequent exhibitions. Sexual images appear repeatedly in her work with a certain regard and affection expressed for phallic ones.
All body parts appear regularly, but breast and womb images are also seen repeatedly.
She used the metaphor of the table in a number of sculptures and piled them high with large male and female body-parts created of rubber or latex. Centuries of women putting food on tables seems to have earned them a proprietary right to this image. But hers spirit is Jung-like, more fundamental, than is usually seen. Her spider is majestic and more like a god-spider than something from a children's tale. One clear sign of her early contact with the French surrealists is her manipulation of scale.