My art practice has been engaged in illuminating underprivileged means of knowing. Currently, the most significant example of this can be found in the loss of physical perception during the interaction with a screen. I wonder if the illusion presented by the screen might disguise challenging truths of our own culture. I believe the control maintained by the solidifying uni-view of an image on a screen create new and exiting spectacles of something very old: the prohibition on transformation. Throughout thesis I have been committed to investigating potent sources of wisdom, like body language and material depth perception, that are inactive when engaging in flattened, two-dimensional mediums. To help me in my floundering to clarify the inherently un-clarify-able I make splashes with the literary and physical works of Roger Caillois, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Terry Tempest Williams, Elias Canetti, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Elizabeth Grosz, Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Sylvia Arden Boone, Eugene Thacker, Gertrude Stein, Beatrice Wood, Ken Price, and various lectures given at the Cyclonopedia Symosium: Leper Creativity.
By making marbled and luminescent bowls that act as water bearers, healing ponds, or open shapes, I actively create spaces where viewers may feel balanced from their regular screen presence by being present with the depth of physical mediums. Here, a viewer may be knocked off balance and suspended by coming into visceral contact with the confounding truths hidden in the imperceivable information exchange of complex material forms. I worked sculpturally because I was interested in the conundrums that can be found in three-dimensional depth. I worked in clay, a wet medium, because I wanted to express my belief in the potential to perceive fluidity and transformative properties in all objects. I chose to fill some of my bowls with fish to represent both our fear and wonderment of unknown depths, as well as to show the spirit present in every object, if we chose let it touch us.