Wynn Newhouse Awards

Statement

Ulcerative Colitis, Neutrophilic Dermatoses, thyroid disease

I experience chronic autoimmune disease, marked by digestive and skin inflammation. The dearth of language to describe and decode the messages embedded in the sick body's reactions to stimulus leave the chronically ill with little agency. My work seeks to bridge the gap between intellectual thoughts and visceral feelings, positing an alternative to language where language has proven inadequate. Out of necessity, I embrace the temporal, the abject. Reducing my language to simplified forms and material gestures, I enact the blurring of distinctions on multiple levels: the flat drawing becomes architectural, the notational mark is subject to gravity, the tool is rendered a useless metaphor.

I start with the familiar form of the ceramic bowl as a template for sculptural manipulation. As a cultural symbol, the bowl calls to mind the biological need to eat and digest. As an object, it mirrors the protruding belly and/or the empty stomach. By hanging the bowl sculptures on the wall at eye level, metaphorical "gut feelings" are elevated to “head-on" assertions in physical space.

The ceramic sculptures are grouped and painted in large-scale murals that address the room as a container for the body, complicating the intimate scale of the bowl as container. The installations exist as residual performances, a catalog of actions hewn with scatological references and domestic themes. Bowls are stabbed and penetrated with clay logs while dripping paint marks the walls. The reverberation between the sculptures and the murals mimics the fuzzy vibration between tactile and psychological perception.

I place great trust in the whole body as a source of knowledge. Instinct guides both my art practice and my journey navigating the world in a sensitive autoimmune body. The abstract, intuitive, process-based art practice becomes a site of resistance against a flawed paradigm that grants little value to embodied, somatic knowledge. Participating in the disability community, the insights I gain from my attunement to my particular body add to a growing pool of shared resources from which I am constantly learning and healing.

Window Wall 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall 85” x 132” x 4”	b is for backwards b (d) [installation view] 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall Left Wall: 96” x 90” x 4”, Right Wall: 96” x 112” x 4”	And Digestion [detail] 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall 85” x 59” x 4”	Happy Time, Penetration Cloud [installation view] 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall Left: 93” x 89” x 4” Right: 93” x 135” x 4”
Wall Bowl Addition Plus 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall 80” x 64” x 4.5”	Wall Bowl Addition Plus [detail] 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall 80” x 64” x 4.5”	Horizon Slice, Pink Band [installation view] 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall Left: 90” x 85” x 6” Right: 90” x 142” x 6”	Horizon Slice [detail] 2016 ceramic, underglaze, oil, acrylic, ink, watercolor, brad nails, wall 90” x 85” x 6”