STATEMENT OF WORK

My artistic practice comprises sculpture, drawing, and performance. Each play a role in questioning subjective relationships to physical and mental space, form and emptiness, and the often-imperceptible division between. The materials that I use: their history, varied meanings, and symbolic potential are at the forefront of my practice. I make ceramic forms as containers of emotional and psychological complexity that address personal history through cultural objects. Most of the ceramic work is unglazed, and I focus instead on selecting specific clay bodies that are most suitable for atmospheric firing methods. I also intentionally choose clays and making methods such a thin coiling that are not ideal for making large-scale forms. The resulting forms can shift or crack in unpredictable ways during the firing process, serving to upend the methodical, meditative, and labor-intensive process by which I build the works. I have come to not only accept but also encourage this and view this aspect as a collaborator in my practice.

The increase in scale of my ceramic forms led me to start creating soft sculptures that literally and metaphorically offer support. They show the physical weight of the ceramic object that they hold (unlike a traditional plinth). However, even as these soft sculptures support this weight they do so with effort and distortion to the originally intended form.  As a result this fraught formal relationship is imbued with metaphorical meaning, culminating in works that are equal parts poetic and pathetic.

The role drawing plays in my practice has changed and the ongoing  “Wandering Nerve” series represent this shift. Using the process of frottage to make rubbings of paper and mixed media collages brings about a transformation that reveals the invisible imperfections and idiosyncrasies in the materials beneath. Though existing on a flat surface, the resulting images give the illusion of depth and space and bridge the gap in my thinking from two dimensions to three. The drawings exist as a visual but also conceptual maps that inform the patterns for the fabric sculptures. However, they are not just a means to an end and are considered wholly independent pieces, often bearing little resemblance to the sculptural works that follow.

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