"Play Clay"

Abstract

Graduate school for me was a life experiment. My intentions to become an artist never were implied until my last year as an undergraduate when I finally decided this new direction of mine has yet to even begin. My background was focused in freestyle skiing. I attended a rigorous ski academy for high school where I was trained for a specific lifestyle. So when I applied for graduate school my interests led my directives into altering that lifestyle and ultimately discontinuing it to investigate a new way of life. I started with the intention of expanding my knowledge for meaning and purpose of the art I create, and to explore new bodies of work. Over the course of the two-year tenure I have experimented in two different genres that include abstract surrealism and realist iconography. Though at first seemingly unrelated, threads of symbolic self-expression and narrative have been the main underlying theme of my work. This kind of autobiographical work has led me to defining what exactly measures the significance of having personal narrative in art and the relationship to working in ceramics.