06/04/2024
Some glamor shot from my recent MFA thesis show "Dryer 14". These pieces are all over 6 foot tall, hollow and include non-ceramic elements like cement, bronze cables and fabric. Some are salt fired, some cone 6, some wood fired.
Here’s the statement about this series:
My current body of work seeks to present the viewer with a tableau of human scaled objects that exhibit corporeal physicality and the suggestion of self-ownership. In static engagement, in halted propinquity, like a frozen gathering these pieces behave as “nearly known objects” and are interrupted by our presence. Their otherness is amplified in their non- objective forms that linger on the periphery of definition, but their atavistic texture is intended to invite touch and connection. Always the other, always at arm’s length, yet calling to be pressed tightly against our palms and fingertips.
I’m curious as to where the livingness lies. The pre-composed mud seems to hold nearly no living qualities- so is the impression contained in the object? Is the recognition somewhere in the middle? Is this all happening behind the eyes? The objects are dead stone yet also a collection of moving atoms, an archive of energy and actively participating with our thoughts and bodies – this is the paradox of material existence.
I’m haunted by our physical, visual and perceptive relationship with objects - the mass they quietly lock up - the interplay they foster with our bodies – the veiled expression they share, enact upon us and withhold – as well as the magnitudes they conceal behind their cunning ability to play dumb. I create ceramic sculpture using a labor intensive, system oriented and intrasubjective practice - engaging with the mercurial nature of self as well as the voyeuristic, perceptive and haptic qualities of material agency.
