Year one complete!

Hello summer and hello sunshine!  This year has been a transformative year for me and my work.  I've been drawing, painting, throwing, hand building, using the wood shop, and creating installations.  

This past semester I also took a class called Theoretical Constructions of Space which was perfect timing for my transition into sculptural work.  The class helped me get to the core of my influences and solidify my ideas more thoroughly.  Here is an excerpt from a paper I wrote for the class about my installations.

"I have created a library of images in architectural references that become transformed into abstract shapes after various drawings and hand building parts of the drawings.  These shapes and structures are then assembled to create small installations that incorporate multiple mediums of various parts completing a sort of new space.   In my piece Come with me back to this place a relationship forms between the objects in the space forming a dialogue in memory and a narrative from past experiences.  There are implications of structures and perspective with in the shapes even though there are pictorial qualities that I examine.  There is a bodily engagement between the larger structures and the smaller, flatter objects on the wall forcing you to question where this space may exist and from where it came.   Leaving this uncertainty in my work leaves room for wonder and exploration."  

Carry me up and over the blue 

That's right, down over there

Here we go all the way to over here

Come with me back to this place

The first two images are from mid semester for my first year review (which went great!) and the last two images are from the end of the semester.  I'm excited for the movement my work has taken in just a year.  It gets me excited to see what will come out of the next two years here at the U now that I'm settled into TAing and my studio space.  Thank goodness for this 3 year program!

After the semester though, all I wanted to do was get back to the wheel!  So while working on a commission I'm going to be exploring new vessels and giving my conceptual ideas a rest for a little bit.  Here's a shot of a commission in progress!  

I was also lucky to be invited into the Yunomi show at AKAR in April!  It was a fantastic show with many other lovely artists!  This summer I'll be TAing for a summer class at the University as well as assisting Tetsuya Yamada in Penland in August which I am very excited about.  I'll be heading down a few days early for the exciting yearly Penland Auction!   Can't wait to hang out with my friends and fellow artists Bailey Arend and Angela Eastman.  And I can't complain about being in the hills of North Carolina again!  

Hope everyone is having a cool and wonderful summer!