Individual Artist Project

Four months after this project is complete, in November 2025, I will have a show with this work at the gallery Duluth Pottery and Tile. The show will be up on the walls for two months. I chose not to have this show during the duration of the grant because I want to be able to focus all of my energy during the year on the creation of this new work. At the point when it is hanging in the gallery, my work will inspire people to think about their relationship to the natural world, how plants and humans have a deep and ancient connection and how we can enrich our lives by opening up to what the plants around us have to offer. While I will be approaching these pieces as personal reflections on my relationship to plants and their properties, I see them as being learning tools in the wider community for people to tap into wholeness and healing through nature. ; My goal with this collection of paintings on ceramic panels is to find my creative voice, to get in touch with a deeper part of myself, to figure out a pathway to my personal visual language and to create a body of work that shines a light on the healing properties of plants in order to come into deeper relationship with them and myself as an artist. Each painting that I complete will bring me closer to knowing how to speak my own visual language fluently. My measurable outcomes are the amount of emotion felt by work, the amount of risk taking visible in the pieces, the extent to which the work conveys its message and the existence of 24 painted ceramic wall hangings of various sizes representing 12 different plants. I received the ARAC Artist Access grant in 2020 to explore the ceramic surface on a series of wall hangings and I was successful in exploring all of the techniques that I had laid out for myself and finishing the 10 pieces that I had envisioned. Creating this new body of two dimensional ceramic work has been an intention of mine for years and satisfying this call to dive deeper with my artwork will be my top priority. I am used to working with deadlines and getting done what I set out to do, a skill that I've groomed in the past 8 years working with my partner on our functional pottery, Burdock Ceramics. I am very accustomed to preparing for art shows, painting long hours in order to finish the work for the firing. I usually do one Art Festival a month from June to September and with the help of this grant, I will be able to do one less show and focus my time and energy on this project. ; I will be able to know if the work was a success by seeing how vulnerable I let this body of work be and by observing the amount of emotion that the pieces invoke. I am not interested in simply making illustrations on clay, this work needs to be heartfelt and dynamic for it to be successful. I will take a look at the imagery that I'm using and the ways that I'm playing with composition, I'm looking for new imagery and bold, creative choices when it comes to composition. Through this work, did I make myself vulnerable by speaking honestly and make marks that are my true voice? Did I visually communicate to myself and others the healing effects that certain plants can have on the human body and mind? Did I make a ceramic panel or cluster of panels depicting 12 different plants' By answering these questions at the end of the project, I will be able to measure if I reached my desired outcome.