Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident- October 2024
Kelly McLaughlin grew up in Washington State where she received her BFA from Pacific Lutheran University in 2014. She completed a Post Baccalaureate program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage in 2017 and received her MFA in Ceramics from Ohio University in 2020. After graduate school, McLaughlin was a summer resident at the Archie Bray Foundation, a long-term resident at Studio 740 from 2020-2023, and a returning fall resident at the Bray in 2022. She still resides in Helena and is a current resident at Omerta Arts. Her work has been showcased throughout the US and can be found in numerous private and public collections.
Within the natural world, there is a need to survive and find safety. There is constant work involved in being hypervigilant, always ready to fight for what little you have. As a sculptor, I use animal and human figures as an access point to our collective understanding of struggle through emotionalism, scale, color, and familiar gesture. We all hide, bare our teeth, lash out, and flee in attempts to control the world around us. This intense effort is apparent in every part of my making: from subject to process to exhibition. Like many others, I have built myself on the belief that there is not only value but a necessity to labor.
Each piece reflects the unrelenting fight to survive in its various stages, using turmoil as a visual form of confrontation and change. Though agnostic myself, my work refers to my religious upbringing and academic studies of religion, psychology, and anthropology. I exchanged a belief in any god for a belief in labor: physical, emotional, and otherwise.