Congratulations to Spring, 2024 Jumpstarter Innovation Craft Awardees, Elizabeth Alexander and Abbey Muza!
Contrary to their delicate appearance, the process of removing areas of fired porcelain is aggressive and hard on my body, yet I keep finding new possibilities for these objects. Years of accumulation has provided a hefty supply of such porcelain fragments removed from objects. I would like to use this funding to push my porcelain altering practice to include sculpture made of all of these bits. I will be able to upgrade my air compressor to a model that can sustain an hour or two of cutting. The funding will provide access to the materials and expertise that will help me revitalize this series. Current trends of ‘biblical femininity’ and ‘traditional wives’ motivate me to interrogate such principles and ways they endanger our rights. Additionally, frivolity is used to diminish associations with the feminine and the domestic, of which porcelain ware is almost cliche, yet these same items are so often used to measure the homemaker, and my work probes those contradictions.”
Abbey Muza uses weaving and image-making to explore narration, identity, and abstraction. They have been an artist in residence at ACRE and Alternative Worksite, and have been a Fulbright France Harriet-Hale Wooley Awardee, a Leroy Neiman Fellow at the Oxbow School of Art, and a visiting artist at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. They have shown their work at spaces including Tusk, Slow Dance, and the Fondation des États Unis. They have a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.