Homesick

I make hand-built ceramic sculptures that are reminiscent of my experiences and life in the place I call home.  My work endeavors to express the conflicting emotions and experiences that stem from having disdain for aspects of my home culture while simultaneously having love for the people who inhabit it. Throughout this body of work, identity is a common thread. Using nostalgic references, various colors, pattern(s), forms, textures, and imagery, Homesick creates a visual diary showcasing my conflicting pride for who I am and where I came from, and shame for my home’s lack of comparable growth and misplaced values. These internal conflicts come together in my sculptures, creating a clash of personal identity.

 I utilize terra cotta clay for its rich mineral content to signify accumulation both physically and abstractly. When hand-building my pieces, I squeeze, pinch, and pull the clay performing pain-inflicting actions upon the media to create landscapes and still lives that are visibly tactile and symbolic of life. The vast treeless plains, rolling hills, pastel skies, and pioneering past are symbolic of my midwestern homeland. I use “kitschy” imagery, quilts, and references to quilts, as well as domestic objects to underline my distaste for the extensive history of gender inequality and the disregard for the accomplishments of women and to confront the viewer’s reactions to art that embraces what is known as “women’s work.”

 The arch has a prominent role in my work and is the chosen vehicle for my expression. I am attracted to its unique and identifiable form that carries vast connotations. In some instances, the arch manifests as the rolling hills of rural Nebraska, in others, it acts as an architectural facade. Whatever the case, the arch is a symbol of strength, transition, and perspective. In architecture, arches hold up the most enduring structures similar to the way that the women in my life are the foundation of their environments. Enfilades are a captivating example of the arch’s ability to transform spaces and elicit feelings of being in multiple rooms at once. My work, using the arch, abstracts and applies these concepts to my autobiographical narratives about being a woman born and raised in the rural Midwest and the inner conflict that comes with it.