Muscle Memory

During the invitational symposium on Muscle Memory in Hungary, May 2018, I found myself unwittingly working through the catharsis of what seems to be a lifetime struggle I have experienced with the vessel that is my human body.

My studio practice engages the relationship and responsibility of community in healing. This is explored through conceptual and material examination of ways in which clay, in its ceramic form, conveys “static motion.” Clay is inherently of the human body – the sediment of millennia. The medium reinforces the physicality of the implicit corporeal themes of ailment and recovery. I am informed by my own 20-year journey out of fibromyalgia and living with congenital kidney disease.

Newer works belong to this family of work, and have been exhibited at the Gladstone Hotel’s Come Up to My Room Design Toronto, January 2020.

Featured

Life Force

2018
Eight sets of kidneys: six different clay bodies; hand-built; gas, wood, electric fired
Vary in size from 20-27cm x 12cm x 4-6cm. Wall-mounted variably. Each pair of kidneys represents a seven-year cycle where the body fully renews itself. The audio component of breathing in various states of consciousness, comfort and discomfort.

Moving Forward

2016
Each of seven “boxes” are 11cm x 11cm x 11cm. Porcelain with iron oxide decal, images of the artist “boxed in”

Betrayed – Kidneys

2018
This work is in the permanent collection of the Canadian Embassy in Budapest, Hungary.

Lurking

2018
Stoneware with porcelain wash, hand built, gas-fired.
Total panel size is 80cm x 60cm x 4cm, wall mounted, installed with video loop.
Lurking references the body’s organs on a “blank slate,” i.e. porcelain washed organs wall-mounted in relief, overlaid with video imagery of myself as an innocent newborn.

Disembodied

2018
Stoneware with porcelain wash, hand-built, wood-fired. Total panel size is 40cm x 70cm x 4cm.
Wall-mounted.Disembodied integrates my healing crisis in graphic abstract representation.

Betrayed

2018
Stoneware, slab built/wood-fired 36cm x 10cm x 24cm
Betrayed Is part of the Spaces Within series. The negative space depicts the human bladder.