Legion
Exhibition dates: November 9 - 16, 2021
Fears, Ceramic, Glaze, 2019
In a Frenzy, Lithograph Print, 2019
Real Mask, Ceramic, Glaze, 2020
Legion, Ceramic, Glaze, 2020
Artist Statement
I create ceramic sculptures, drawings and paintings that convey that people are more complex than what can be seen from the surface. These complexities are derived from life events which have shaped our internal selves. The inspiration for this work comes from my childhood, starting in the sixth grade, when my sister began weekly sessions for her anorexia. As these issues progressed through my childhood and teen years, I began to repress any emotions I felt besides happiness in an attempt to make my parent’s burden easier. This habit continued through highschool into early adulthood ending when my childhood best friend committed suicide. This shocking event broke the dam that held back all of the emotions I had been repressing. This overwhelmed me because I had not been forced to confront many of these feelings before. After thoughts of suicide became more common from everything I was experiencing, I began to attend weekly sessions with an art therapist. It was in these sessions that I began to wrangle in my emotions through stream of consciousness exercises. I would use paper and markers or watercolor to create marks on a page, and then I would use the marks to try and unearth what feelings were buried within me. This process was difficult but also empowering. For a long time I had let my emotions fester and grow larger, and when I was finally able to extract and observe them in a helpful environment, I realized they were not as scary as I had let them become in my head. Now, after years of self improvement through therapy, I am able to consciously look inward at my emotions and understand them and their origins more readily.
My current body of work, seen in my show Legion, focuses on specific events which have shaped who I am today. Each sculpture, drawing and painting serves as a portrait of the inner me at influential moments in my life.These monstrous forms are the byproduct of the healing process and signify the emotions that arose through awareness rather than habitual repression. The imagery composing these works are drawn by retrospectively observing periods from my life that I want to further understand. The creatures, which are created from a conglomeration of many other figures and objects, also serve as a metaphor for individuals. From afar, my monsters can seem like just one large figure, like how people can seem one note upon first meeting. However, upon closer examination of my work, it is evident that there is far more detail that makes up the whole, like how it is the details of our distinct experiences and emotions which make up our inner selves.