Un/Contained: MFA Thesis - Ceramics

Abstract

My work revolves around the phenomenological experience of botanical enrapture. I explore the ways in which the vessel grounds otherwise unfathomable abstractions of desire and intimacy. I work with typologies of the vessel form and histories of floral ornament, taking parts that are essential and distilling them in a dance between form, surface, and space. Decoration becomes physical form. Symbiotic connections manifest within the installation through color and material. Activated surfaces and light-admitting apertures function as entry points for the viewer to pause and reciprocally experience a relationship between the body, the pot, and the flower. In the installation, this experience becomes immersive and plays with our perception and visceral response to things of beauty through an offer of containment and open form.