Artist Statements
I chose to focus my concentration around phobias. My goal was to express and exaggerate the emotions of people’s extreme irrational fears. I wanted to demonstrate what that phobia would show and feel to the viewer. In the beginning, I started creating the most common fears but then found it intriguing to work with phobias that not many people encounter. As I worked, I noticed a theme of hands developing. I decided to utilize the hand to create a relationship between the phobia and the viewer.
For the “Fear of Imperfection” (1), I felt like I needed to show a stronger relationship and visual. This led me to start incorporating hands into my pieces. I first started with this trend when I created the “Fear of Tight Spaces” (4). I used the hands to show indents coming out of the concave box to show the movement of tension and fear of the box caving in. The hands were a different color to show emphasis. As I continued to create my pieces I started to focus more on the relationship between the hand and the phobia. The use of terracotta clay allowed me to make strong hands and unique forms. However, I felt like I needed to add more in order for it to clearly show the phobia that I was trying to create. For example, the “Fear of Injections“ (8) is clearly expressed due to the exaggerated amount of needles injected into the wrist. Adding the needles and the details on the veins helped bring the phobia to life. For my last piece, “Fear of Tiny Holes“ (11/12), I was happy with the strong structure of the hand and arm. The coloration and pattern of the holes created a strong sense of disgust. When looking back at my earlier pieces, I am proud of how much I improved on both my hands and its incorporation with each phobia.