Elizabeth Donnally Davidson | Embodied will be on exhibition March 3rd - April 29th, 2023.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The vessel as both a three-dimensional form and a metaphor for the human experience has always interested me.
Human beings are themselves a kind of vessel. We contain our experiences–joy, sorrow, pain, aging, illness, love, grandiosity, hope, despair, loneliness…–while simultaneously being shaped from without by our experiences–dog bites, broken fingers, burns, amputations, being beaten up, bullet holes, squeezing, pushing, surgery, jokes, kisses…
We are none of us perfect because of this altering process, but these forces and their effect on us have the potential to make us more beautiful because of it. I think “perfection” is highly overrated and insidious.
This body of work represents how I see the vessel form (both sculpturally and metaphorically) as an embodiment of the forces that impact it. I hope that, in spite of the deformities, they would be expressions of what I think is beautiful.
All of the work is coil-built, mid-range stoneware, and fired in oxidation.