Journal of Student Research 2019

Journal of Student Research

Out of Routine Out of Routine

180

181

Melissa Lackey Senior, Studio Art

Mentor: Charles Matson Lume

The essence of an object is not purely derived from the physical form. Through referencing specific objects and spaces, I connect my viewer with fragmented memories and encounters as a way to address existence and existentialism. I highlight objects that are a part of mundane life and strip them of their functionality, to bring them to the forefront and acknowledge how many aspects of human life go unrecognized. I create ceramic installations that capture a fragmented space or experience. These fragments have been “othered” by being replaced with objects that fail to function in space as the object that they are attempting to mimic. The objects that occupy the installations function like the pod flowers in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), failing to reach criteria. They are not the objects that they refer to. The objects that I have created have no function, even though they often reference functional forms. The works are not the objects that they appear to be. I have sculpted the objects that comprise the installations out of a paper clay body. I use a gestural, haphazard building technique to contribute to their lack of function and separation from the real, as well as making it more apparent that the objects that I am sculpting are not trying to assimilate into the referential. I also use color and arrangement to highlight their separation from reality, and to establish that I am not trying to create specific settings for specific scenes, but rather ambiguous fragmented “scenes” or arrangements that lack logic, aside from the representational forms. The general craft of the objects serves as a sort of lens in which reality can be distorted. I have begun recently incorporating found objects in my work to ground the installations to this mentioned sense of reality and contrasting with hand sculpted elements in the work that take the viewer out of the molded reality. The scenes are not arranged in a functional orientation in an attempt to alienate the viewer. I invite the viewer to question why these objects are being elevated and what they have to do with each other. The installations are visually stimulating to look at but are about nothingness. The work exists as the arbitrary ways that we view the things or don’t view things in our daily lives serves to question the perceived meaninglessness within the

Subversion (detail view) 2018 mixed media on stretched canvas 72”x 60”

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