Undergraduate Work
Walls & Windows, Senior Show, 2004
Throughout the annals of ceramic history and across cultures artists have interpreted the concept of the pot in anthropomorphic terms. The vocabulary used by ceramists (an elongated neck, a foot, a distended belly) reveal the underlying idea of a pot as metaphor for the body, both in a physical sense and the vessel as a metaphor for the soul. In a similar way objects created often bear reference to architectural forms of their cultural origins, such as the resemblance of African granary baskets to places of dwelling.
For me, such spaces and buildings have always held fascination; the dilapidated barn, a weathered silo, an abandoned factory. The structures strewn across our visual landscape often conceal an ambiguous space; one knows not what is inside, nor what may be going on. These ambiguous spaces are also evidenced in our lives, as the profound mysteries that make up our lives are in part unknowable, and therefore unspeakable.
Distilled to their essentials, structures are arrangements of walls and windows. By their very nature walls symbolize separation, acting as a construct of defining and containing space. For purposes of protection or individualism the walls can separate us from nature, or from each other. The walls we create in our lives can provide comfort, and at times limitation. This collection of work reflects a desire to know oneself and be fully known; the moment when a window opens, and a wall is let down.
-BA, 2004