Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (ASPN) 2026
Sophie Lamar is a figurative, ceramic focused sculptor based in Kansas City, Missouri. She holds an AFA and AA from Johnson County Community College, and in 2025 she earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Sophie’s formative years were characterized by the divorce of her parents and the mental health struggles she and her siblings experienced as a result. Her work focuses on fragmentation and repair; she is interested in the incomplete. Her work is often of a larger-than-life scale and explores both relief and freestanding sculpture. She intentionally breaks her work post-bisque as well as post-glaze, before reconstructing the parts into a new whole. Individually created glazed tiles are inlaid behind and on top of the original image.
Her work has been exhibited throughout Kansas City, including at the Emily and Todd Voth Artspace, Vulpes Bastille, KCAI Gallery, and Johnson County Community College. She was an intern at Studios Inc. for sculptor Leon Jones, and held a position as the Glaze Research Assistant during her studies at the Kansas City Art Institute.
Fragmentation–at its center–cradles violence. Broken, ruptured, shattered; my work finds its home here. I am interested in the incomplete. My inspiration surges in moments of conflict, intensity, and growth.
Repair–at its center–diffuses care. Piecing together an object or image I have intentionally broken is an opportunity for me to embody patience and gentleness. This act serves as a metaphor in my studio practice for the way I approach relationships with loved ones in my life. They may not be perfect, but they are mine to care for. I don’t see damage as negative, it is hard earned evidence of a life.
I use glaze as a medium that is saturated with an undeniable ultramarine blue that swirls and orbits around the surface. The human figure, for me, is a home I always return to, whether drawn, sculpted, or carved in relief. Themes of conflict and repair are formally infused into my work through intentional breaking and meticulous reconstruction. Much like how we continue to grow individually and relationally, I often revisit and continue to change works with multiple materials (plaster and wood) even after their final glaze firing. Purposefully lacking permanence in form, nothing is promised, and everything can change.