Nara Burgess's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Ceramics

Graduation Year: 2017

Artist Statement:

Remnants of culture, forgotten objects and spaces, are placid realms which are never truly absent after ceasing to think about them. My practice is an appraisal of the bleak, deteriorated, suggested passage of time. This is directed through the moments of beauty and peacefulness these spaces create. I see ruins as a need to explore, but find that eerie quality more evident as nature attempts to take back the ruined building.

Experiencing these ruins through exploration, finding small moments that serve as beautiful reminders of the lives once lived there, and taking that moment home to never forget the building. I strive to curate experiences. Functional ceramic work represents the moment to take home, to serve as that everyday reminder, and juxtaposes a impermanent, fading object, onto a permanent material.

Biography:

Nara Burgess is a BFA candidate in ceramics at Maine College of Art, graduation 2017. Being born and raised in the backwoods of New Hampshire, she takes inspiration from nature and woodgrain. Working in fine Grolleg Porcelain, Nara’s work is an investigation of an eerie peaceful silence that is captured in abandoned buildings and ruins through the use of surface illustrations on her pottery, and through large installations. She creates spaces for the viewer to experience the desolate feeling of ruins, while placing pots in for moments of found beauty. The spaces and the ceramic work are equally important to the finished installation, as one never overshadows the other. It is important for the viewer to be able to take something home from the experience, and the functional pottery serves that purpose.