By Regina Haggo

Rabbits are cute, cuddly and reputedly oversexed. Men who wear white shirts and grey trousers are not, it seems to me. But what happens when hare and human meet?

Steve Mazza, a Hamilton sculptor who works with clay, has the answer. He’s created 14 bunny men for an engaging exhibition at the Transit Gallery. Out of Character (inaction figures) is even making passers-by stop on the sidewalk and smile.

Mazza’s funny bunny men are fantastical beings, but they are also very ordinary, and their ordinariness ultimately elicits our sympathy.

They look quite human, but each has a huge nose and only one human ear. Most have narrow, heavy-lidded eyes and they almost always keep their mouths closed and their lips are set in a straight line.

Mazza has cross-hatched the surface of each flesh-coloured head, so that it looks like skin, but magnified. This texture also suggests fur, however, and the figures are the size of rabbits, not people.  Two long ears on the top of the head give the men a distinctive bunny look. Mazza has the ears growing out of the head, so they are not like Hugh Hefner’s playboy bunny ears. 

Because Mazza’s figures are clothed, we can’t tell whether they have fluffy tails. Unlike the seductively dressed bunny girls, Mazza’s men are neatly outfitted in grey trousers and black shoes.  Most of them wear white shirts and ties, and some sport V-necked sweaters. The similarity of their clothes hints at uniformity and conformity, yet because of the brilliant way they are displayed in the gallery with lots of space around them, they appear isolated.

Animal-like figures in clothes are nothing new. Beatrix Potter’s clothed animals were well loved because they were a comforting sign of nature tamed and civilized.

Ancient Egyptian sculptors carved images of cat goddesses wearing long tight tunics. In fact, Mazza’s figures have the look of modern cult statues with recognizable attributes and gestures. But while ancient deities did with their hands referred to significant deeds and events. Mazza’s bunny men are associated with the most mundane of life’s acts.

And like toy action figures, they are fantastical creatures but unlike them, they do not perform dramatic feats, but are immortalized in a moment of inaction prior to some everyday deed.

The bunny man titled “Waiting” greets us on entry by holding up his hand to look at his wrist watch, as though to reprimand us. His right arm, resting straight at his side, makes him look uptight. Nearby, “Fiddling” plays with his orange and yellow striped tie. His ears are down and so are the corners of his mouth, making him look somewhat despondent.  Elsewhere, one unhappy figure holds a traffic ticket, while a relieved one, ears and hands lowered, faces a urinal. 

“Chocolate glazed,” wearing a yellow V-necked sweater over a white shirt and a red tie, holds a white mug in one hand and a [donut] in the other.  The small [donut] seems like such a big treat, giving the activity an air of sadness.

Pathos is also evident in the figure sitting alone at a big table, and in the one who sits by himself on a bed, his hands folded demurely in his lap. After all, bunnies are supposed to be sex-mad and fertile, but the empty bed belies this image.

Nevertheless, these bunnies have multiplied – all over the gallery. Well, almost. Mazza’s work is complimented by “Iris”, an exhibition of about a dozen striking photographs of irises by Hamiltonian Peter Stevens.

Regina Haggo, a former professor of art history at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. You can contact her at dhaggo@thespec.com