Artist Statement
My work investigates how objects hold memory and how our connections to our past experiences evolve over time. I create work with organic textures, raw materials, washed-out color, and repetition. By combining clay with plant-based materials, I create new textures and associations in ceramics. By patching and pressing materials such as paper, clay, straw, glue, and raw materials, my work features simple, rugged, and large forms that are sometimes fragile in nature. Through the acts of sculpting, coating and stacking, I am ultimately able to represent and juxtapose a broad range of ideas.
In my large-scale work, I explore the feeling of presence versus absence, attempting to make what is stored in memory visible. Some of the memories I explore spring from early childhood when I lived on a dairy farm and of the time adapting to the gradual loss of my father. I integrate hay, references to milk and silo forms — all qualities of the surrounding landscape and a time and place that exists for me as an amorphous memory. I am interested in the identities that we carry and the new spaces we transition into with time. I hope that my work brings awareness to the temporary, uncontained, and layered experiences of life.
Man-made objects hold information in their material, function, and form and have the potential to represent what a culture values. An object serves as a sort of continuity of the past — it assists in our returning to a memory and contains a sense of permanence. I make objects out of materials that are not necessarily permanent in order to investigate and understand aspects of my memory, to hopefully better understand what has held value in my life.