Red Lodge Clay Center Short-Term Resident 2015
Corinne Beardsley was born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her love of the physical relationship with the material and the drama of something emerging in space is why she sculpts. She pursued her studies at Hartford Art School in Hartford, CT and University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; building large scale installations of ceramic figures. After receiving her MFA in sculpture from the New York Academy of Art in 2011, she went to China on an Artist Residency with the Central Academy of Fine Art in Bejing and Shanghai University. Corinne’s current work involves building sculptures, masks, costumes, and collaborative cardboard caves. She currently is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore and Salisbury University in Ceramics, Drawing and Sculpture.
The head is a framework to explore liberation and play through the sculptural process. The responsiveness of clay is a record of physical mark making- ranging from gentle modeling, to teasing squeezes and pokes, to violent destruction and aggression. Clay becomes the body, I communicate through touch. I organize and collage the fleshy twists of slumped clay, composing these gestural preservations into facial expressions. They exist as an illusion of being a raw, undulating mound of clay and a smirking face simultaneously.
Most recently, I have begun a series of larger than life size figures in cardboard, foam, and paper clay expressing the gestures and characters that one can transform into when dancing. They are powerful yet vulnerable, expressing fluid or awkward moments, entranced in their movement. Through dancing I am liberated from the weights of oppression and inequality in our society. By bringing this energy into my sculptural process, I aim to empower others and inspire release from oppressive forces.