Of Flesh and the Feminine

This research study led to the creation and production of a new body of work that exhibited at the National Council on the Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference (Cincinnati, Ohio), Louis Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (Lubbock, Texas), and then will travel on to other national exhibition spaces and museums. The discovery of new knowledge leading to exhibition is the foundation of my creative arts research. I am currently looking at the overlap of feminist and vegan critical theory, the intersection of feminism and environmentalism and the relationships between human animals and non-human animals. I consider myself an animal rights activist that uses art activism to foster dialogue about the animals, earth, and interspecies relationships. With the help of the Kilgore grant, I completed a series of eight life size figurative ceramic sculptures each comprised of fifty individual ceramic slip cast parts. These ceramic sculpted torsos of women hold up gigantic heads of hair. Atop the head of hair sits metal soldered and woven "cages" or upside down French revolutionary era hoop skirt holding cornucopias of tassels, horns, synthetic hair, faux flora, faux fruit, and ceramic chicken feet, legs, and wings.