June 4 - July 16, 2022
Artist Talk: Satuday, June 25, 11 am
My interest in making– the process of building, assembly, and material– is rooted in a shared memory of learning and playing. The act of play informs our early understandings and interactions with space, object, and body. Toys and educational objects elicit physical and visual interaction, as well as create a sense of permanence. While I am fascinated by the way we learn as children, I am also engaged with the fact that the process changes at some point. In the interest of pushing back on this eventual shift, my work taps into the visual language and functions of play objects like: blocks, jungle gyms, and puzzles. My practice and the development of a language of forms looks to mimic and return to the state of learning, as well as prolong the collective memory of play.
In the series of Capped Vessels, which served largely as a material study in clay, I flipped the order of my usual process of designing, then fabricating. In these new works the clay portions came first, with little vision for the final outcome. The wood elements are informed by the shape and placement of voids in the fired clay and were fit to cap off the forms and create an enclosed body. This shifted order of operations allowed for more real time freedom and play, while also posing a more rigid pre-established puzzle to solve.