Kim Cridler: My Wisconsin Home

Using steel and bronze, as well as organic materials such as beeswax, bone, hair and mother-of-pearl, Kim Cridler creates vessel forms that connect her interests in history, craft, ornament and function with an investigation of material and metaphor. Comprised of several sculptural works utilizing patterns and motifs based on the environment around Cridler’s current residence, My Wisconsin Home also references “open storage areas in museums that facilitate the formal and cultural study of objects and their histories.”

Skeletal vases and urns-built with a systematic grid as a frame and augmented with stylized flora and fauna-evoke historical shapes while denying the uses commonly associated with the objects. The grid itself contributes to the ornamentation of the vessel and Cridler’s addition of flowers, bees, fish, birds, mice and plants further enhances a juxtaposition of shape and form while simultaneously offering content.

For this Windows at RAM installation, Cridler presents a collection of patterned and ornamented vessels on shelving structures that echo the storage areas of some cultural institutions. The shelves establish a literal and metaphorical framework, allowing for a certain kind of study and examination, as well as a means of collecting and cataloguing. Cridler’s careful observation of the environment and natural life around her Wisconsin home provides inspiration for materials, patterns and motifs. As Cridler notes, the ornamentation is “based on sketches and studies made during [a] daily practice of collecting plant material and insect life from the gardens, fields and prairies.”

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