Claire Moore
In my series entitled Claire-Clair-Clear, each layer of material builds upon the last, creating an entirely disconnected internal self-portrait. As a humorous allusion to the French translation of my name: “clear,” the layers are manipulated to either expose or hide my own figure in the pieces. My body is prevalent throughout the work, though sometimes only through her absence.
Dutifully collecting materials from my everyday existence, I curate my creativity source through a rational and observational lens. Using a color-coding and mark-making key, my visual vernacular unifies each piece through shared symbolic meaning. However, the construction of my work is completely intuitively driven and allows for alteration and expansion at any moment. Claire-Clair-Clear addresses my own frenetic emotional landscape, but with a language that’s directed and logical.
Feelings, spiralling thoughts, conversational interpretations, self-talk, individual perspective: these components of the human experience generally remain hidden--sometimes even from ourselves. My work depicts the act of giving physicality or visual space to the intangible. By layering repeated imagery on translucent surfaces with scraps of material from my daily life, I process intense emotional experiences through my work.
Sonia Kraftson
Disturb
I am anxious facing a blank sheet of Arches, so I drag the paper along the road or make a mess on the front side and then turn it over. By working from the back, or from a “ruined” surface, I am able to dump water, splash inks and manipulate recycled trash over the top, and then incorporate my marks. The compulsion to sabotage the material parallels my struggle with attachment to work and to trusting my relationship with myself and the world.
Distort
I look to societal practices that express inner conflict, body dysphoria, the need to bound land and my own glutinous consumption. Imagery I reference include faces, fences, maps, prisons, figures on the horizon, packaging, and overlapping line drawings of natural and manufactured objects.
Distill
I want to create compelling images, but often end up overwhelming a space with data, where the viewer must search for forms. This tension between representation objects and chaos, echoes my experience of jumping into content and hiding within surface distractions. I long to one day illuminate an object or figure within a distilled moment; to activate a surface as if it is a sustaining conversation; to allow our vulnerable selves to listen and for the work to change us.
Linda Lock
My ideas grow from taking long walks in the woods. I explore the look and feel of the forest in my work. I collect surprising moments of texture, like a piece of mossy ground meeting the lichen on the bark of a fallen tree. I create a place where I can pause to play with a surface in a similar manner to my experience outside.
I cultivate my images by bringing together carved and printed scenes from my personal experiences with recycled, repurposed and found natural materials. I tend to my work with a tactile and visual focus. My process nurtures and maintains my relationship to natural spaces when the harried pace of life tears me away.