King Exhibition, Group 4

My process is driven by exploration of material and form. My choice to work with astroturf aligns with my goals of experimentation with new materials and expanding my artistic Vocabulary. The life-size scale of Please Sit encourages human interaction, while its non-traditional and unexpected context encourages curiosity. This piece addresses both formal and conceptual considerations in that the seat itself is reminiscent of natural textures while the conceptual fosters a unique communication among humans, art, and the natural world. I hope that the public will interact with this object. I want my work to be accessible to as many groups as possible, offering a moment to sit, think, reflect, and process the world around us. By using astroturf, Please Sit draws attention to the stark contrast between the concrete beneath it and the natural world. Its materiality creates a dialogue that highlights the way we use nature in our everyday lives as well as the way we aestheticize it for our own needs. I hope to incite conversations about the way we manufacture nature by seating ourselves within it.

Over the last four years at the University of Colorado Boulder, artistically I have focused on ceramic sculptures. I got my inspiration from spending many summers on the beach admiring the beauty of the ocean wash in with the tides. My sculptures incorporate the inorganic shapes and movements of the ocean and the organisms that live within it. There are many fragile patterns and designs that are formed from the life forms that exist in the ocean. I found these forms most intriguing because of how delicate they are structurally. I hope to continue in this direction as my art career continues to develop.

My name is Hailey Carlson. I'm 22 years old and have deemed myself an Artist and Designer. I hail from rainy Washington state and miss the weather dearly. In May, I plan to finish my Bachelor's in Strategic Communication with an emphasis in Media Design, along with a minor in Art Practices. While I finished my minor requirements long ago, art is something I will never stop creating, with every medium I can get my hands on. I currently reside in a one-bedroom on the hill here in Boulder, shared by my lovely pet Beta fish named Blue, my aussie/border collie puppy named Moose, my wonderful boyfriend Cooper, my a plethora of art supplies, and many, many plants. When I'm not working on a project, you'll find me in the mountains, at a show, or in bed watching Bob's Burgers and eating vegan ice cream. I like to make art that will make anyone stop and think, even if just for a moment.

Humans have been molding and firing clay for tens of thousands of years. As a species, our connection with ceramics has only strengthened in the realms of both art and technology, integrated and indispensable to our modern society. Scientific research suggests that billions of years ago, the electrical properties of clay minerals assisted the formation of the first biologic life on earth. My work aims to exemplify the analogies between the natural and human perspectives on clay. I often change my perspective on time from the unimaginably fast molecular reactions going on in every living being, to the impossibly slow movement of tectonic plates and deposition of carbon into the earth. I work to bridge the gap between these perceptions through the use of a material we are profoundly connected to.

Through much of my work, there is a common derivative thinking about what purpose will the piece serve for myself and for those that view it. I’ve been contemplating often how to keep my work my own story while also being an advocate for a larger issue. This specific piece, “The In Between,” is one of three that are speaking to violence of innocence. The gun was the representation of the end approaching. Eyes of onlookers are weaved between to show those that watched and did nothing.

Liz Langyher is a midwest-born object maker specializing in sculptural ceramic. Her practice is an act of personal catharsis; a constant eulogy for a stretch of land, a road, and the time spent between miles. She views her body of work as speculative mapmaking; an attempt to build the memory of personal experiences observing landscape at the intersection of natural and human environments. By recreating memories of phenomenological wonder in the landscape through abstraction and material studies, she seeks the shifting narrative around perception, experience, and memory.

Place identity is a concept built on spatial relations; cultural and communal connections to seemingly overlooked spaces. My work appears as a narrative through inspection of repetitions and patterns of color and form. Looking at altered landscapes and commodification of nature in natural and manufactured forms. I study the relationships humans have to their surroundings and how wildlife adapts to urban areas. I am interested in investigating the coexistence of urban and natural environments. Combining the arts and the humanities througha visually engaging multi-media experience, which extends beyond the gallery walls to the immediate surroundings. My process is not to find how humans are interacting with environment in a specific moment, but rather, to show the collapse of time as a reference to complex metaphors of human existence. Facilitating a dialogue between diverse perspectives but bring forth a visible aspect to elements (physical, technological, and human) that interact to create an altered landscape.

I explore material in reaction to my relationships to spaces and objects. Through the visual organization of memories and feelings, I create my own understanding of these relationships. Small objects are used as character stand-ins for the body, the feeling, the thing, and different combinations and inventions of these. In rearranging objects within a grid or list, I wrangle the intangible into something tactile. The work, often referencing the familiar, seems to almost be the thing but not exactly the thing. By contextualizing the work in familiarity, I use the “almost” to invite the viewer to make their own understandings of the relationships situated within the work. Through the attachment of charms, which tend to be miniaturized souvenirs of an experience or identity signifier, I wish to invite the viewer in closer for an intimate experience. I seek to capture emotion in material whether its incorporating humor, rendering tangled feelings, or disrupting lines with emotion. By solidifying an emotion brought upon by memory within the permanence of clay, often rendered to be fragile, I acknowledge that the object will only ever go so far as to nudge these sharp memories back up into mimicked and fleeting feelings, which are always quick to soften.

The folds of a navel. The canal of an ear. The gloss of a toenail. Beautiful and strange characteristics like these are the materiality of being human. They define our physical bounds, separating us from our environment and they play a large role in defining us as individuals. We don’t seem to focus on any particular aspect for long though and instead, with good reason, focus on the bigger picture of self and others. Every now and then though I find myself caught up in one of these hallmarks of humanity which at times can be captivating, funny, and alien. These details are humbling reminders that no matter how much we, as a society, may try to distance ourselves from the natural world; my being is still very much from it. These features become the subjects of work, removing them from their context on the body and shifting them in color, scale, and their interplay with other organic forms. This abstraction allows for an opportunity to better appreciate the forgotten small landscapes of my body and the important roles they play in defining myself through deciphering these new forms.

Molly Ott is always considering rituals of Americana and the personal myth. Gridding, collecting andarranging each have a part in her language but absurdity is the most preferred principle of all. Working mainly in sculpture, mischief functioning alongside sincerity is a subversive method in her practice for deconstructing social barriers. This opening of creativity values the amateur, creating intuitively as a nondiscriminatory technique. Sculpting with found objects, because of its recognizable, every-day commonness, has also been a part of her answer for making art more accessible to a larger audience. The variety of found objects she employs (food, organic matter, kitsch) challenge her with continual exploration of composition and assemblage, choices mixed with intuition as she has a longer history with these objects than raw material. Her careful, gridded compositions present aesthetics as being ritualistic, functioning as cathartic. Like storytelling, rituals can live beyond a single life and travel through multiple generations. She is interested in the transiency of daily life that is tangled in the immortal aspects of ritual. After experiencing her current work, ideally a space is created for recognizing one’s own rituals, revealing daily life as sacred. By identifying these private rituals, a person is more likely to have an awareness for the ritual that have preceded themselves, connecting them to their humanity.

My work exploits material potential: I sew fiberglass insulation like quilt batting, its sharp, sly surface yielding to the needle and machine. I scorch the surface of plywood, peeling back the burned layers to reveal the ones below. I use architectural forms like the arch to reference the places we build and the spaces we consider sacred. ​The meander, a riverine shape, is a recurring motif in my work, standing as a symbol for change and a reminder of the inevitable limits of our command. ​What is the space between shaping the landscape and allowing the landscape to shape us?​ I respond to the measures we take to keep control and investigate the boundaries of our perspectives.

My work explores family, trauma, and the ways we attempt to heal our pain. Most of my earlier years were spent living with my mother who was constantly in and out of an extremely abusive relationship. It was only recently that I learned during this time she was suffering from addiction which had been keeping her with this man. I watched my mother's mental and physical health gradually deteriorate over the course of 18 years as a result of the abuse. Fortunately, she has found the strength to pull herself out of that situation and has begun the process of healing, but I have found that everyone I love is having to deal with it in their own way. For this series I have submerged my old family photographs in super saturated solutions of sugar water and saltwater to allow crystals to form on them. The visual effects of this practice represent the ways in which my mother's trauma and addiction has not only affected me, but everyone else in my family.