Honorable Mention Award Winner

Sara Torgison

Encountered Affinities

Glaze and  Oxides on Stoneware, Cone 10 Reduction Fired 

16 x 14 x 12"

$880

This piece considers the cyclical synergies of power transfer in relationship, and the underlying inescapability of transformations between life and death. The owl is slowly becoming the mice, each feather morphing into fur and ears, while the mice begin to encircle and meet its gaze. 

Artist Statement:

Working between ceramic, fiber, and found materials, I build onto and extend finite and fragile surfaces to emphasize and inhabit marginal spaces. Strange alliances formed in passages between hard and soft substances are resonant of the shifts inherent in navigating public and private life and the distance between self and other. The action of configuring bridges in transitional zones draws upon traditions of mending and maintenance as a continuous collaborative process. My work explores themes of fracture, flexibility, and holding space for dissonance and discomfort necessary for individual and collective growth and healing. My process generally begins with movement of clay materials through impression back and forth between hands and medium. This interplay is bi-laterally suggestive. How I create an animal or figurative element and where fissure or margin begins are directly informed by how the clay moves, and by what I can reasonably expect it to do in the kiln. I forage materials to dye fiber for crochet and knit processes. My interests in traditional knowledge and sustainable sourcing creates a shifting availability of colors and textures and bolsters the complexity of material relationships interacting within each work.Transformation in material and bodily structure is focused through interplay of animal and human figures, interrogating the nature of exploitation and societal values around life, consumption, and death.