Senior Exhibition 2015 Gallery
Preview
Creation Date
Spring 2015
Description
Materials: Ceramic
Dimensions: 4-8 x 5 x 5 inches per piece
Project Advisors: Benjamin D. Rinehart, Sarah Gross and Rob Neilson
Year of Graduation: 2015
Medium
Sculpture
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
COinS
Artist Statement
For the last seven months I close my eyes and faintly see a structure. It stands tall with many hanging fixtures and I can hear the sound of flowing water. Compelled by the need to understand these thoughts, I constantly attempt to interpret the implications. Throughout its evolution my art work has begun to test boundaries, investigate beauty, and question value. Cultures have prized art for millennia, yet only in the last century have artists started to question why? Beauty is A Fragile State, many attempt to suspend in time; however everything beautiful eventually comes to an end. A new wave of artists now puzzle over methods to thwart feelings of preciousness; creating art works that incorporate a time limit, self-destruction, or strategic destitution. This context has truly shaped my work, causing examination of dichotomies surrounding the beauty in life. I aim to evoke these concepts through the exploration of uniformity, individualism, synthetics, naturalism, and their relationship to planned obsolescence’s.
I chose to further push these dichotomies through the use of clay and PVC pipe. Clay, at times, is fickle by nature. Pieces are delicate and can be prone to cracking, ruptures, or even explosion. Through the medium’s unpredictability, I have become more accepting of any outcome; seeing beauty where I might not have before. Contrastingly, PVC pipe is purposeful, functional, and highly malleable. Due to its industrial quality, drawing out the aesthetic value is challenging and takes significant planning. Although the two clearly contradict each other, I aim to create a cohesive form, endeavoring to find new and alternative ways to use the material unconventionally. I believe that together they will demonstrate the vast scope that exists, by emphasizing dichotomies can exist harmoniously in the world.
Caitlin Wittner