Artist Statement
Ceramics has taken me down a new path with how I create my art and the art itself. A path that has turned me toward a deeper concept for my art. Clay has turned me on to the path of my mental health. I didn’t always add a concept to my art, I enjoyed letting my art guide me to whatever I needed to make. My work now explores my mental and physical health, something I have always struggled with, along with my mother’s. I spent a lot of my teen years in a doctor's office, whether it had been for my own health, or my mother’s. I always had a hard time visualizing these issues, trying to understand why our bodies were doing this to us.
Picture is of an a green ware ‘mental monster’ from 2022.
So, my imagination turned to seeing them as something that wasn’t really apart of us, like a little demon that lived in our bodies. I called them our mental monsters when referring to my mental health, talking about it as if it was its own entity. So, I’ve started to give these little demons a body of their own to torture, so that they may move on and leave us alone. I use clay as a vessel, using texture to show the rashes and other signs of stress. I use color as well to farther move the idea of these creatures being more demon like in nature, tying it to my religious upbringing that my mother turned to during her declining health.
Piece is from Spring 2022