Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2019
Jessica Sanders is a Graduate Student at the University of Texas at Tyler seeking her M.F.A. degree. She is a ceramic artist focusing on ceramic installation. The work is made up of tiny pieces that are attached together to make flexible sculptures. Sanders received her Associates in Art at Tyler Junior College in 2015 and her B.F.A. at the University of Texas at Tyler in 2017. Sanders has shown locally, nationally, and internationally. Her most recent shows include a solo show in Shreveport, LA and the NCECA Juried Student Exhibition where she received first place for the graduate students.
Fold, overlap, twist, attach, flip, drape, hang, assemble, stuff, loosen, pull, wad, push, layer, shield, connect, bend, obscure, stack, roll, strain, camouflage, cloak, shift, block, combine, mix, add, link, bind, join, force, cover, forget, place, re-place, perceive, accept, count, re-count, acknowledge the pattern, follow the pattern, break the pattern, let the pattern inform you. Respond.
This body of work is process. Process is the way I approach moving the material. I want the pieces to have as much movement as possible; whether it’s real movement from the air or implied movement I get from how I’ve worked the material. I make obsessively. I get started and it becomes hard to stop or get it off my mind. I am drawn to repetitive motions. It’s consuming. It’s comforting. It becomes second nature. Repeating something over and over frees me in a lot of ways to just let the process play out and happen. This work came out of my love for tessellation. Tessellation is a building of shapes off of each other infinitely.
I am extremely interested in the idea of vitrification; that clay starts out, as this malleable substance that can be molded and formed into something and then when fired it becomes that thing. It is stone and unchangeable, the closest thing you can do to reform it is to break it. Now knowing that, I’m even more interested in these vitrified pieces I’ve made and that I have then found a way to make movable again.