Tabs Dodson
Vanitas: The Inter-tangling
Artist Statement
Commonly, we think of ceramic as permanent. It is something archeologists have traced back for thousands of years spanning across all cultures. We tend to also have the mindset of permanence with ourselves and wanting to leave a legacy. We plan out the next month, year, five years, and decade like we are sure it’s going to be there, like we deserve it, we are owed it. But we are so temporary; no tomorrow is promised. One day we will just fade out, ‘poof’ and all that will be left is memory, a ‘legacy.’ All that we leave behind is the impact, whether good or bad, on the people around us and on the place we live.
Clay, when fired, is something that doesn’t go away; It stays in piles of rubble beneath our feet. It is something that does not return back into the earth as it should, but stays forever unnaturally, like humanity wants for itself. College studios typically have huge piles of fired ceramic pieces that have to be taken to landfills every few years. Creating layers of trashed bisque and stone ware make layers of trash that will forever be a part of the earth, scaring the ground we live on. This is something that I was hoping to focus on this show, so I created a special clay. Something that is really important to me is finding sustainable practices in art so I went to many of my artist friends and asked for their trash clay; I took this clay that was considered trash by other artists and mixed play sand into it, creating a clay that would melt away in rain and not damage the earth around it. These pieces are never quite done until after they are fully melted and become a part of the earth again. Something this continual process shows is the effect that we as humans have on this earth. We as a group tend to think of ourselves as larger than life: being that we are more important than the other beings that inhabit this planet.
I also will not be making these people ‘realistic’ because it is so easy to write people off as just what we see. What we see is fundamentally just light reflecting off matter and translating in our brain as an image, but people are so much more than just a reflection. People are cultural expectations, upbringings, love, and passions. I hope to expose what’s underneath the reflection. I want to show their humanity and their realism. Someone’s realism is not just what they look like but how they feel, how their brain works, and how they see the world. I want to show peoples reality but also their temporariness. Something that is important to this work is the fact that the audience has to directly confront this piece outside of the white-walled gallery.
The gallery is often reserved for people of higher status. The location of my work being outside creates a space that is open to all it also allows for the art to begin deconstructing- the way people see and evaluate art. This takes away the sharp edge that academics put on evaluating art. Something that also is important is the silence that the statues give, creating an even further anonymousness to the people they represent. Art should never be entertainment at the expense of others; it should speak to our truth even though it’s hard.