2022

Acrylic on Canvas

101 x 58 inches

The painting Spring 2020 is made of layers of acrylic wash as I tried to purge the haunting nature of motherhood’s trials, failures and pauses in the Covid - 19 pandemic.

Wood fired belly molds. Made randomly over the 9 months I was pregnant with my second child. A continuation of exploring the idea of women as vessel. Be it vessels for life or burdens. It is also a documentation of my body’s physical changes, gorgeous and gruesome. Transformed into an object outside my physical self. A celebration of the collaboration between my husband and I. This theme carried out in the fabrication by the intensive labor of him wood firing each piece in a the kiln he built. The process and objects a documentation of my body’s physical changes, gorgeous and gruesome.

Since then they have evolved into an on going project called Evaporation. Using the ceramic molds vessels to mix pigments over paper. The belly forms had warped and cracked in their firing, allowing for leaking and seepage, resulting in a staining of the paper, leaving a primal plasmic print. Referencing the relationship between my body and stages of symbolic pregnancy.

While meditating on the nature of coil pots, building them up, pausing to let the clay harden and strengthen before you continue to avoid collapse. It clearly appeared to me as a metaphor for my current experience as parent in the pandemic.

Mothers (and people) we are constantly asked to take on more, without taking a pause or time to strengthen or support our foundation. We often break and buckle under the weight of the constant influx of responsibilities and challenges. Even when barely balanced we are forced to take on more, while holding up so much. The reverberation of that collapse (subtle or devastating) radiates through our spirit, homes, families, community and globe.

I began building pots with this rymthm in mind. Without the pause. And let the piece buckle organically under their own weight. Each pot, it’s own story of strength and breaking.

At which point they are fired. Vitrafied. Given new strength and new fragility. Each one is a story memorialized. A warning. A call for help.

In parenthood there are those moments for me, where I seem to float outside myself. And I can see myself from above. They are quiet moments, tired moments, isolated moments. Moments of unseen work and unremember love and efforts taken for granted. Drawing them, is an effort to reground myself and make proof of my fleeting reality.