My final for my Cut and Paste ceramics studio with David East came from an impulse to understand spiritual places like the Standing Stones of Machrie Moor in Scotland or the Plain of Jars in Laos. What makes a place spiritual?
I ended up concluding it is a combination of history, mystery, as well as the designation of whomever happens to be in the space. In the two mentioned places, there is also the recurrence of circles, which have an undeniable spiritual importance to people.
My impulse then led me to the idea of sanctuary and how we create places and barriers that provide the goals of sanctuary (often peace, rest, and isolation) for us. I've been experiencing a particularly difficult time this year, which has included having my places of peace invaded, making a safe sanctuary an idea of particular concern. Places are what we make them, and our ideas about them are applied.
The idea of sanctuary includes putting up certain barriers. That isolation can be good and bad, depending on the situation. This idea lends itself quite well to some of my infant explorations of self-mutilation or self-inflicted injury, as well as the figure and architecture/space. So here we have a figure, sewing herself into a tent of lace.
I got a well-deserved tough critique on this one. However, I'm definitely intrigued by the ideas within this peace, and I am teasing some of them out as potential bases for my thesis work this upcoming semester or even for my graduate thesis, which is looming in the near future.
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