"Tracing Forward"
September 04 - October 22, 2021 -"Tracing Forward" - Pattie Chalmers & Andrea Keys Connell - Ceramics Installation
Plough Gallery, Tifton, Georgia
Plough Gallery, Tifton, Georgia
Tracing Forward is a curated exhibition of ceramic sculptures by Andréa Keys Connell and Pattie Chalmers. Both artists engage the viewer through a shared understanding of the universality of memory.
Andréa’s delicate, intimate works of repurposed porcelain commemorative figures directly tie to her family and heritage, imbuing a sense of familiarity. Connell’s commentary about the exchanging of stories, guides us -through metaphor- to the correlation growing grass has to the passing of time.
Pattie Chalmers brings to Plough Gallery her handmade ceramic objects which are reflections of relationships to specific people in her life. Through her re-creation of these objects and the connections they represent, we too are transported via our own memories.
Andréa’s delicate, intimate works of repurposed porcelain commemorative figures directly tie to her family and heritage, imbuing a sense of familiarity. Connell’s commentary about the exchanging of stories, guides us -through metaphor- to the correlation growing grass has to the passing of time.
Pattie Chalmers brings to Plough Gallery her handmade ceramic objects which are reflections of relationships to specific people in her life. Through her re-creation of these objects and the connections they represent, we too are transported via our own memories.
About The Artists
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Pattie Chalmers
Bio
Pattie Chalmers grew up and went to art school in Winnipeg, Canada. She received her BFA in printmaking from the University of Manitoba in 1994, and her MFA in ceramics from the University of Minnesota in 2001. Since graduating she has exhibited in group exhibitions on five continents, in six countries and in thirty-four states. She has had five solo exhibitions in the past ten years, most recently the exhibitions Every Thing and More at the Craft Alliance in St. Louis and imperfect ramblings at Merwin Gallery at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. Chalmers has taught at the University of Minnesota, Ohio University and at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where she is currently a Full Professor. (Chalmers might be a little compulsive, and she definitely likes to laugh at her own jokes). Artist Statement My work can be separated into three main types: figures/tableaux; objects/collections and pottery. These categories, although visually distinct, are for me linked by a connection in each to narrative. Accounts from a parent, a teacher, a movie, or a dream—fragments exaggerated or diminished twisted together in an order that corresponds with the flux of how things are remembered. Artist Website: pattiechalmers.com
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Andrea Keys Connell
Bio
Andréa Keys Connell is an Associate Professor of Ceramics in the Department of Art at Appalachian State University. She is a former Fountainhead Fellow and served as the Head of the Clay Area in the Department of Craft/Material Studies at VCU from 2010-17. Andréa’s work has been featured in a number of national and international publications and she has widely exhibited her work. She has had 14 solo exhibitions in various galleries and museums since 2009, including The Florida Holocaust Museum and The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. Andréa also works on large-scale public art commissions such as the See Also endowment commission with the Cleveland Public Library. Along with exhibiting her work and teaching at App State, Andréa has taught workshops on figure sculpting at various craft schools across the country including Haystack, Arrowmont, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Artist Statement My grandmother, a Holocaust survivor loved to be surrounded by beautiful things. She insisted on this all her life. The objects we have inherited from her are constant reminders of this. In Pecs, Hungary she was given a food rations box by the German forces after they invaded in 1944. The box was made of a cardboard-like material that she painted in a traditional Hungarian pattern, covering it in flowers. Another object we’ve inherited from that time is a scarf she made from fabrics she collected while in Auschwitz. She stitched her mother’s name “Lenke” into the lining of the fabric. When I reflect on these objects, I realize that my grandmother was attempting to impose dignity on them. In turn, they have become part of our family history and inform how we relate to all objects and art. I return to these memories in my new body of work. The figurines I have been making over the past year are a collection of objects, gathered from thrift stores, from eBay, and through donations. I view these figurines as once-loved objects, owned by various individuals; over time they’ve been lost to time. They are sentimental, they are kitschy; but as commemorative objects of mass production, they reflect deep and private desires, they were small vessels of meaning that, for various reasons, have left their homes forever. I carefully cover these objects with little blades of grass I’ve rolled with polymer clay. I am attempting to show the passage of time, to imbue a new narrative on these forgotten items. Like my grandmother, I am attempting to collaborate in the dignity of objects, to reach into and past the overt sentimentality, to direct the eye to a range of hidden stories that perhaps brought the original collector to that object. Artist Website: andreakeys.com
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