gretapots

BFA Student

Major: Ceramics

Graduation Year: 2017

Artist Statement:

Children prioritize and navigate the world in a way that is at once completely silly and perfectly serious. They hold dear things that are frivolous, and give love unabashedly and obsessively. The ardor of their levity is something that interests me greatly. With my work I ask the question: what if we kept loving things the way we loved them when we were children? I want to offer this as a possibility to the consumer of my product.
To do this, I use iron transfer decals to make tableware products that are evocative of the archetypical “crush” posters that children and teenagers often have hanging on their walls. The decal mugs feature mainly “serious” people—politicians, actors, writers, and artists. They are people who may be adored by adults, and through my work I attempt to allow frivolity back into that adoration. Emblazoned with gilded hearts, an image of a serious person becomes something frivolous, and recollects the unburdened joys of childhood.
A large part of my current body of work does not contain any representative iron transfer decals, but I attempt to offer the same emotional qualities there, through color, form, texture, and the abstraction of known symbols.
This “serious versus silly” dichotomy also brought to mind the possibility of merging other concepts that are generally seen to be mutually exclusive. I am focused on the push and pull of opposite values and the discovery of equilibrium therein. The serious versus frivolous theme is one of my major subjects, and is considered alongside the themes of joy and celebration versus sadness and darkness, and gaudiness versus elegance.