Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident 2023
Ana Busto is a multimedia artist born in Bilbao, Spain and living in Brooklyn, New York. She is driven by an interest in formal experimentation and the desire to work with what she refers to as “the underdog” – her desire to elevate the discourse around marginalized groups and place it in direct confrontation with the art world.
Every body of work has a situation a context and the emotional experience. Since 2010 my work has focused on the natural world because it is in danger, its beauty, and because of the human violent relation toward it, like the burnt national forests in New Mexico that have inspired some of my work. During covid I got inspiration by the way the natural world had a small revival during the first year of Covid when humans stayed at home and I also made work about the impact of dead in humans.
As a multimedia artist, I find connections between different practices and how they inform each other. I draw on paper to prepare clay sculptures. I move my hands on the clay as if drawing in a third dimension. Conversely, I also create clay sculptures that will later become drawings and paintings. As a multimedia artist, I see and navigate between different practices and get information and experience across disciplines. My ceramic busts, portraits, and animal pieces capture a similar sensibility expressing the vulnerability and often-inexplicable ambiguity of human nature. With simple gestures, I reveal a sense of wonder by employing subtly charged gestures and a lifetime’s worth of experience as an artist.