Artwork
Craft
#Andréa Keys Connell
#ceramics
#sculpture
“What Comes Down Should Go Up.” All photos © Andréa Keys Connell, shared with permission
Andréa Keys Connell has an immeasurably tender outlook on craft. Viewing object-making as a technique to higher perceive how artwork provides to the human expertise, the North Carolina-based artist feels super pleasure in sculpting clay.
Coated with expressive brushstrokes in exuberant hues, Connell’s figures embrace each other and exist in shut proximity, melding into single entities. Her sculptural compositions are impressed by the sheer delight she experiences whereas creating and the sentimental tales on which she bases her works.
Fascinated by the complexity of the fabric, the artist explains that by way of course of, she has at all times approached clay in the identical manner that painters method paint. “I really feel like [clay] has the flexibility to create a extra dynamic portray,” she shares. “With my items, I’m at all times chasing a picture, and after I see that picture in my head, I see it first as a portray.”
Just a few years in the past, a hearth destroyed the group artwork area Connell and her companion had been operating, and several other of her ceramic sculptures perished as nicely. Though many objects had been utterly decreased to shards, some survived utterly intact. Discovering enduring works inspired her household to, as she recounts, “flip towards what hadn’t been misplaced. On this manner, we continued our search with not solely resolve, however a kind of happiness.” Sifting by means of the rubble supplied a way of closure, and in its personal manner, the act of looking out by means of grief related together with her overarching perspective of treating craft itself as a type of looking for. Connell expresses:
This expertise had a profound influence on how I now method my making. The explanation I miss lots of the items I misplaced within the fireplace is that they marked time in a particular manner, and at their finest, they felt alive to their second. They had been, and stay, issues I need to proceed to carry. The lesson for me is: if the thing is misplaced, the language of care is clarified—and I hope this informs my work. I need to maintain the current second, and to carry the issues I’ve nevertheless I’m able to.
Connell is getting ready for an upcoming exhibits at Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville and Jane Hartsook Gallery in New York Metropolis later this 12 months. Discover extra work on the artist’s web site, and comply with her on Instagram for updates.
“Maintain On”
“Lean”
“Shelter”
“Window”
“Steadiness”
“Holding”
“Hug”
“Slumber”
Element of “Maintain On”
#Andréa Keys Connell
#ceramics
#sculpture
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