Thesis II: Artist Statement

My current body of work is the culmination of a series of material explorations in ceramics, metal and digital fabrication. Through my investigations I am working towards understanding a series of binaries: hard/soft, geometric/organic, complex/simplified, static/mobile, function/frivolity and handmade/machine-fabricated. I aim to develop connections between these opposite material and visual qualities, demonstrating the ways in which they can coexist. My studio practice exists in two places: my physical studio where I perform hands-on applications and assembly and virtual space where I generate complex pattern. The rhythm and methodology that has developed between manual processes and digital applications is an integral part of the didactic element present in my work where I am utilizing ceramics in a non-traditional way to create jewelry that is interactive with the human body.

Since childhood I have been enamored by jewelry. Collecting, sorting, wearing and making it has always been a part of my identity but only recently has it become a part of my studio practice. I spent innumerable hours as a child sitting on my parents living room floor arranging colorful beads on thick plastic string to wear myself but mainly to give as gifts. It is the act of making and giving handmade jewelry that has always been appealing to me, in that the objects I have created are not kept on a shelf but rather worn intimately by the receiver, carried and displayed on their bodies.

The expression of generating and layering pattern is an integral part of my work, and a reflection upon the floral and mathematical motifs found in historic Islamic tiles and decorative arts. Islamic tile work is compelling to me in the way that it relates to jewelry, wavering between the realms of function and frivolity and leaning heavily on aesthetic beauty. Similarly to the way tiles adorn an architectural structure, I look to the body as a formal inspiration and a structural element to be celebrated through decoration and adornment.