Self Portrait

Medium Description

Artist Description

My work reflects the delicacy that is associated with women, porcelain and flowers, but it also reveals the natural strengths of these three as well. Women have historically been compared to delicate flowers; I reinterpret that symbolism by allowing the porcelain wildflower imagery to represent a woman’s  inner strength. I apply my drawings as transfers similar to a seamstress overlaying patterns and designs on a dress form. The individual within the identical is found through surface design.

Hexagons embody the human desire to control the organic. The hexagon verges on circular, but still upholds rigid angles. Similarly, the organic female silhouette adapts to cultural beauty standards through rigid stays and corsetry. My experiences with scoliosis corrective back bracing and surgery allow me to empathize with my corset-wearing ancestors. Metal rods and boning are ingredients for both corsetry and scoliosis surgery. My back brace was painful, but designed to correct my form. Surgery straightened my spine permanently with metal screws and rods. Similarly, the Victorian corsetry was designed to “perfect” the female body through constricting boning. My “S” curve needed to be straightened, while Victorian women used their corsets to enhance their curves.

Inner strength has a different meaning for everyone. For me, it is learning from my female ancestors and mentors, relying on my Faith, and building from my own experiences. 

This is the work I expected to fill this exhibition with. For years, this work was my signature image. It was represented in various galleries across the south, many exhibitions across the nation, and featured as illustrations in my book, God the Artist. Hurricane Helene flooded the studio I worked out of in September 2024. I had moved into that studio before I even had found a place to live in Asheville. To me, my studio was “home” more than any place I lived in Asheville. The studio was where I was truly allowed to be myself. It was freedom. It was safety. It was where I came to commune with God. It was my business, my passion, my classroom, my hangout, my personal space, and my place to entertain. It was always bursting with creativity and life, until September 27th when the 2 story building was filled to the roof with river sludge, bursting at it’s metal seams. For me, nothing was salvageable. I lost everything I had in that studio, from my sketchbook going back over 5 years, to my apron from college, the drill my dad had given me for my birthday, all my finished pots for this show, every piece of equipment I saved up money to buy, cookie cutters my grandmother had given me, 500 pounds of brand new porcelain clay, and all of my handmade, one-of-a-kind plaster molds. 

The bittersweet beauty of these fragments of that past body of work living inside a cracked porcelain vessel is that this adds to the delicate strength of wildflowers: they’re here and gone before you know it. It shows the beauty of human grief: the fragments are treasured instead of discarded. The cracks allow for fluidity between the fractures: I’m able to connect with my old body of work while moving into my future bodies of work, allowing God’s light in my story to shine through the cracks.