Artist Statement

I am a maker.
from my earliest memories to the present,
I have practiced the art of making things. two dimensional,
three dimensional,
functional pieces
and sculptural objects.

Of late, I have dialed into clay as my main medium. I am heavily influenced by the Driftless Area of Wisconsin—rolling hills, farm fields and pastureland all interconnected to create an underlying pattern. Building with textured, stretched clay creates the rhythm and repetition I am seeking—a sense of movement, like the passing of time.

The genius of clay is that I can create a three-dimensional form with my hands—touching and manipulating the fresh raw material. By employing brushwork, drawing, sculpting, scratching, carving, slips, terra sigillata, and glazes I am able to build richly layered, nuanced surfaces. While atmospheric wood firing is the form of firing closest to my heart, I also enjoy experimenting with the results I can coax out of my electric kiln. Varying my methods of making results in new possibilities for each piece.

My intent when engaging with these various techniques is to imbue my objects with an inherent emotional charge—a sense of place and feeling—of nostalgia. I urge you to allow yourself to be transported from the familiar to the unknown on a visceral level as you explore my pots and uncover their many layers.

Each newly created piece informs the making of the next. As evidenced in this new body of work, I am forever pushing to explore new forms, surfaces, and firing processes.

Jeff Baenen

Artist Statement

Influenced by both nature and industrial design, my sculptural boxes are constantly evolving. I am fascinated with finding ways to manipulate wood to perform in unexpected ways. My boxes are one-of-a-kind, with meticulous craftsmanship present through each piece. The concepts of my pieces are often based on memories, emotions, and stories, with nods to architectural, mechanical, and industrial design. I believe a box can be much more than just a simple vessel and I am honored to create pieces that hold our most treasured objects, our secrets, and our history.

Georgia Bellas

Artist Statement

Weaving threads of the subconscious and dream worlds into the narrative of the present, I make the familiar unfamiliar, the mundane mysterious, and shine a spotlight on the pockets of animism inherent in everything around us. Through object theater, I release the inner spirits of inanimate objects by exploring the possibilities inherent in their materials and movement. I play with shadow and transformation and the alchemizing power of story. My work crosses many disciplines, including writing, film, puppetry, music, jewelry, and textile arts. Currently I am obsessed with amulets and oracles, memory and time, grief and dreams.

Artist Statement

The instruction I received in college has had a direct correlation to my artistic style with a great deal of emphasis placed on chiaroscuro and the interaction of light and dark with strong light sources. Masters of the Renaissance were often studied as examples by my instructors because of the emphasis that light placed on the anatomy, objects, and perspective. The dramatic and theatrical results of strong light and shadows have assisted me in creating dramatic compositions that are very suitable & compatible with intaglio printmaking as well as painting and photography.

Emotions and isolated solitary figures have made a great impact on my work. I believe in embracing those moments and figures and allowing them to become the basis of my creative process. Each artwork is personal to me and serves as a moment recorded in time of a family member or a memory from an event or place in my life. My goal is to create thought-provoking images that make people feel deeply when they see my work. I draw my inspiration from everyday life experiences that surround me. I often begin a piece of art by documenting a subject or experience with my camera and work from those photographic images.

I tend to place emphasis on my subject’s eyes and face. The eyes and facial expressions of my subjects tend to be the focal point of all of my art regardless of the medium.

Artist Statement

I am a multimedia artist who focuses on the use of craft materials in a fine art application. I am heavily inspired by nature and fantasy, choosing my subjects based on an affinity for creatures with no common language with us. I use plants and animals as a vehicle of expression for human experiences, which are showcased in many of my works. Expression of certain emotions has been hard to share at various stages in my life and being able to create artworks that embody those difficult emotions has been a way to express myself without words.

Grief, in particular, is an emotion I have been exploring in my artwork this year. The piece titled A Lily in Bloom is a larger-than-life jaguar that began as a sketch of just a bust and quickly grew a whole body as I sculpted the head. This piece is the largest, with the felt pelt being the most complex pattern I have ever created. Each spot on the jaguar was cut individually and no spot is exactly alike. They were then sewn by hand onto the pelt of the jaguar. No machine stitching is ever used on my pieces.

The tedious process of hand sewing feels akin to the bubbling waves of grief as you mourn the loss of someone or something dear to you. There has been a lot of grief in my life this year—that grief now resides in the spots and seams of the jaguar. Other pieces in the show, like the pink deer titled Glamour, represent expressions of self. The rainbow trout-inspired piece, Trophy Fish, represents ancestry and skills passed down from previous generations. Each piece displayed in this show is in some way a reflection of myself.

Another concept I explore in my work is my use of materials. The base forms in the core of the sculptures feel more like a classical art process, using clay and paper to create armatures with accurate musculature that feels more like art from antiquity in many ways. Then the sculptures get covered in skins of felt and other fabrics, upholstery fringe, embroidery thread, and sequins. These are materials that tend to fall under the category of craft and not that of fine art. I like using these materials for how readily available they are and how relatable they can be. Almost everyone can remember creating something with these materials, whether that was a holiday craft, a childhood activity, something done for decoration in the home, or for fun with relatives and friends. Not very often are these materials thought of in a fine art standpoint and I like to challenge the idea of them being fine art materials. It is fun for me to explore their application in fine art and expand my audiences’ views of the materials in this world.