Creature Comforts
Exhibition dates: November 18 -22, 2024
Closing reception: Thursday, November 22nd, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Vibrangler Fish, stoneware and steel wire, 2024
Predator (The Dog in Me), stoneware, 2024
Peeping Tina, stoneware, 2024
Artist Statement
Throughout my life, I’ve always felt there was something wrong with me, something dark and dangerous that needed to be repressed. Then, when I was fourteen, I realized that I was a lesbian. Queer women are marginalized through fear mongering and propaganda that seeks to characterize them as predatory and dangerous and exclude them from women’s spaces. They aren’t “real” women. They are the Other, and they must be kept away from polite society. Such attitudes kept me in the closet, kept me afraid of exploring my true self. I seek to recontextualize this fear. This body of work examines the joyous, the vicious, the perverse, and the humorous nature of the lives of queer women, often drawing parallels between their lives and the pervasive mythology that surrounds monsters in folklore and pop culture. These women will be represented in their glorious totality through the unyielding yet delicate medium of ceramics. The sgraffito illustrative technique seeks to draw parallel to graphic novels and zines, which are among the most widely-circulated types of queer art. There is both joy and pain, comfort and helplessness, fear and acceptance in a queer identity. It is glorious and often uncomfortable in a way that I have grown to love and something to show as an uncompromising whole.