Step into your Alibi

Exhibition Statement

Step into your ALIBI is an opportunity for visitors to play and confront their own relationships to play across childhood and adulthood. I create sculptures using ceramic and found objects of play that stand with an interactive play experience. The show's title, Step into your ALIBI, is a direction for visitors to let their guard down, and find an alibi to explore the space with the curiosity of their past-child-self.

Originally, this work was an attempt to combine my ceramic sculpture and my research interests in childhood development and play. I found that the lifecycle of clay is very similar to our own coming of age. Working in collaboration with the clay, I create my large volumes. While the clay is wet, and I am using it to build, it needs a lot of care and attention. I make sure it does not dry out, support its heavy weight, and allow the clay to guide me as much as I guide it. As the clay begins drying, it needs less and less from me as a caretaker. My volumes feel adolescent as they dry and hold their own weight. In the end, after the clay goes through the firing process, it is absolute and feels fully mature. It has now surpassed my care and stands alone. My clay has grown into a finished ceramic volume, just as I have grown from child, to adolescent, to adult.

I combine my ceramic volumes with found objects of play for a sense of familiarity. I ethically source all of my found objects of play from flea markets and the side of the road. The objects I find hold a deep history of play but have finally reached a point where they physically cannot be used safely par their original uses. I give them new life as mentors to my ceramic volumes, guiding the ceramic as much as they guide my viewers.