Statement
My current practice focuses on site-generated works. Rather than looking at a place and seeking to transform it through my imagination, I am using the specific history of a site as my starting point, unearthing a-heroic narratives from conversations and trips to historical museums and libraries. From this research, material choice and display unfold. Site-generated work also insures another important element in my practice: collaboration. Not only do I seek to work in collaboration with other artists, but my outsider position requires that I work with people who are experts through their lived experience or through the archive. A research-based practice employs my roles as an artist, social scientist, and curator.
My background in ceramics provides a distinct orientation to my work. Labor and repetition are the backbone of craft. I aim to activate spaces with labor in two ways: through scale and habit. By increasing scale, quantity itself dictates labor. My projects have at least one element that is physically intensive. Rather than throwing 100 pots, I cast 2000 pounds of plaster or install 4000 pounds of clay on a gallery floor. Ceramics, perhaps more than many other materials, is time sensitive. Checking work to monitor the drying process is a ceramic habit that I translate to the gallery by returning to complete some daily task. This daily activity alters and re-activates the work. It also allows me time to reflect on the work
The archival nature of ceramics and the propensity to read cultural practices into shards acts as a starting points for my display decisions. I use the patterns of ceramic history to suggest the connection between use, practice and the museum. I take the questions I have surrounding clay and apply them to other materials. Which elements suggest permanent artifacts and which elements suggest an ephemeral display? How can the method of display and the material speak to the history of use? While materially disloyal, I maintain a dialogic connection to clay.
WRITING
