The thesis show is hung, and with the exception of a couple of things I plan to finish tonight, I am done! My thesis comittee met and voted me through. I have completed my final artist's statement. I am ready to sleep!
The opening reception is Thursday, November 10th, 2005, in the McComas Hall Art Gallery in Starkville, MS, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. I hope all of you can make it, but since I know there's not a shot in hell of that happening, I'll put pictures on Flickr and tell you all about it. Those of you that can come, I can't wait to see you!
Love you all so much! Here's the last and final statement, well, mostly last and final. My four thesis people will pick it to pieces and tell me what sucks and I'll fix it and bitch miserably and then it will be final!
See you there!!!
Artist's Statement
I want to go home. In my home all of my favorite things are arranged in pleasing and organized displays, the walls are painted warm, inviting colors, the furniture is comfortable and beautifully made, and the sun light pours in old paned glass windows onto gleaming hardwood floors. My home is more than a place to sleep and eat: it is a stage, a display case, a secret cave, a cushy love-nest, a place of renewal and emotional nourishment. I crave this home, this beautiful place where verything is pleasing and purposeful. I've been looking for it since I was about 12, and I still can't figure out how to get there. This exhibit is the beginning of an ongoing body of work titled "Make It Home" that studies the process of arriving home and making home.
Homemaking rituals fascinate me. Home decorating and household items promising convenience and beauty have flourished in the last 60 years, and now we can't imagine a comfortable home without these things. We all have mixing bowls and fluffy towels and towel racks to hang them on and curtains and vacuums and see-through plastic food containers. These are the objects and conventions that Americans use to make a home feel comfortable and inviting. I could study these customs and critically analyze the wasteful, illogical messiness of our American comfort binge if I wasn't so addicted myself. I confess that I adore Martha Stewart's housewares at Kmart. I wander through Ikea the way other people go on nature hikes. Old, new, used, handmade, I can't get enough of this stuff, and there is so much to be had.
I am enamored with that murky intersection where the practical and the aesthetic combine to make a place that feels like home. My work incorporates grids as a way of organizing and unifying the large quantities of kitchenwares, textiles, and pretty decorative nothings that fascinate me. The grids also speak to the volume of stuff that we now need to feel at home. I need at least two sets of nesting mixing bowls, four little decorative mirrors to open up the space, and collection of seven vases that can be changed out depending on the event, season, or flower arrangement. In my work I like to play havoc on the purpose of an item, destroying the functionality of the object in the process of prettifying it, or investing a cheap tool with value in how I represent it. I enjoy highlighting the customs associated with a household object by forming new relationships which subvert the original design. I want to find clues and traces of the emotional spark that creates a sense of comfort and belonging that a bunch of things thrown in a room cannot provide. By forming new relationships between household objects I hope to understand how all these things add up to a home.
