Projections - Ceramics BFA Show
Being who I am has been defined not just by me, but also by the projections of others and what they want me to be. It is these projections that are made about me, that in my case define me and put me in a mold that I can accept or that I can deny. The projections that I fit into have already been established in society.
In some instances I use these projections to my advantage to hide, conceal and protect myself; in other cases they affect me more then I lead on. I am not a person that shares my feelings, emotions, fears, problems and stories. I tend to keep them inside and not show them or feel some of them. It is just the way I was wired to do things. I have been called many words over years, some of them are not very nice and others are words that I don’t know the definition of, so I have to Google them to find out what I have just been called.
My work came into being in a natural way when I realized that I could use my sculptures to show the words that I have been called in a way that makes them emerge from sculpture and at the same time they dissolve into the forms of the sculpture. You can be looking at the sculptures from one angle and realize that you are reading something, or you can also see it from another view and think they resemble human body parts.
The colors that I choice for the sculptures are meant to show the representation of the words and how the sculptures interact with each other. Furthermore they describe the feeling that I have towards those words. The dark and bright colors establish how I see the words and what it represented to me with the dark in a negative outcome and the bright being a positive outcome. The way the glaze overtakes the sculptures is representational on how those words that are said to us can overtake us.
The varieties of the different materials that I am using are linked to the colors and representation of the words by the definition of the word or by the meaning that was given to by the person saying the word. The materials that link the sculptures together go from one side of the spectrum of being fluffy, pink, and feminine to the other side of being leather, metal, strong and harsh. The sculptures are unified and linked by the different materials and accessories that are attached to them, this is meant to go with the sculpture to clarify the sculptures true meaning or multiple meanings that sculpture has by having more then one accessory that connects it to other sculptures.
By creating this work I started to show some of the insecurities that I have towards myself but also others that I learn to embrace. The words do have different meanings to someone that identifies as gay then to someone that is heterosexual or even a person that knows gay culture. The sculptures are puzzling, scrambled and encoded with different meanings depending on who you are and the background you come from.
