No description available.

No description available.

I wish I could believe in something. Having grown up in a religious household, I have continually teetered between faith and doubt. Landscapes seen and unseen are my last source of awe; here my doubt is suspended – for a moment. Using unfired clay, I create alternate landscapes inspired by sublime philosophy. The sublime experience is born in a sense of amazement linked to fear of something beyond our understanding or control. The amazing intricacy of microbiology, a whole universe existing alongside and inside us, fascinates me. The abundance of unfamiliar life in my work triggers a cautious curiosity. My imagined worlds push beyond the boundaries provided for them invading our tense reality. These unfamiliar landscapes offer a window of escape, where viewers explore their relationship to an alternate world which bears similarities to our own.

generic of is a creative text paralleling the creation of my thesis exhibition. I use fragmented layers of narrative, description and prose in the same way each handbuilt ceramic is fired multiple times, allowing the glazes to build upon themselves. This is a close study of the still life, the intimacy of consuming, and how trauma is passed through the gut.

No description available.

My work explores the complex social geography of modern society and the intricate relationship between mankind and the environment. Through this work I explore the past and present lineage of manifest destiny, from its beginnings in Europe to western expansion in America, to forms it has takes in contemporary America. These ceramic forms serve as the conceptual grounds to explore the romanticizing of the western landscape especially from an individual and group perspective. I simultaneously celebrate the history of the pastoral life while questioning the authenticity, and motivations of that lifestyle, and use this platform as a jumping off point to ask questions about humanities complicated relationship with nature. Through hand-labor, contemplative making, and a reverence for tradition, I explore both interrelated and divergent human perceptions using clay as my primary medium.

“Truth happens only by establishing itself in the strife and the free space opened up by truth itself. Because truth is the opposition of clearing and concealing, there belongs to it what is here called establishing.”[i]—Martin Heidegger All things contain their own individual existence. When I look at objects I notice material, tradition, individual history. These are starting points for my imagination to seed and germinate. My ideas are fragmented, nonlinear and nonsensical to others but they hold honesty to me. Honesty is powerful and is worth sharing. This document is an examination of my work during my graduate studies. I will explain the importance of my relationship with: the imagination, jokes, materials, traditions and process as these are constant variables of my art practice. [i] Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Works of Art” in Tanke, Joseph J., and Colin McQuillan. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics. 394. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2012

The ceramic forms in this thesis project represent a study of the sculptural and figurative qualities of the ceramic process. This study includes a search for a personal form language, development of the slab construction technique, and development of a glazed surface appropriate to the work. The subject of the work is the human torso, with the vessel-like forms focusing on the core of the body as a metaphor for the core of the human spirit.

Zugl.: Heidelberg, Univ., Diplomarbeit, 2005 / Titel auf der Beil.

This thesis is an exploration of the connection between women and nature, specifically the violence that has been inflicted upon them both and how it is interrelated. I positioned my research within the field of Ecofeminism, which critiques the language we (as a Western culture) use to associate women with nature and vice-versa. Traditionally, women are more often associated with nature than men are, and the environment is personified as “Mother Nature”. I argue that uncritically gendering nature as “female” is problematic because of the associations we typically make between the two, and the expectations and values we assign to them based on this association. Nature is historically viewed as inferior to civilization, and women as inferior to men: they are supposedly giving, nurturing, and passive, as opposed to taking, empowered, and active. While the assumption that women are inherently more "connected" to nature is harmful and perpetuates these stereotypes, there is truth in that women, and in fact all oppressed groups (based on race, sexuality, class, ability, etc), share with nature the common history of subordination and inflicted violence by the hegemony.