Steadying Pause
6’ 10” x 19’ 6” x 12’
Metal, metal lathe, stucco, paint, ceramic, glaze
2018
2018 Open Studio Fellow
Artist Statement
In my practice, I examine the moments of ambiguity that occur during times of transition in my life. My work is a recollection of encounters I have had with seemingly ordinary structures, spaces, and objects in my daily life. The encounters give me a sense of grounding and moments of both stimulation and provocation. As I settle into a home and community that I’ve lived in for the longest time since childhood, I notice that I am looking more internally to feel grounded during this shift in my abstract sculpture in ceramics, metal, wood, and cement.
I am gradually becoming more curious about the emotive language in these encounters versus the visual language. It has led me to consider the emotional spaces in between contrasting feelings; between anxiety and composure, uncertainty and determination, displacement and feeling at home, spaces to fully
comprehend and describe. I wonder how they might look in a visual conversation and am compelled to put physical energy into those spaces with my sculptural work.
I create abstract drawings, sculptural ceramic objects, and reinterpretations of drawn imagery with various materials. The compilations of created pieces are placed in installations that are suggestive to viewers of familiar emotive occurrences. I am interested in how installations change the physical space they inhabit. I strive to engage the space I install my sculpture in, composing the space similarly to that of my drawings and engrossing viewers into my installations.
As my life and art practice evolves, I remain committed to the searching, observing and investigating of the instances in this world that give me moments of consideration.
Erin Paradis
Born: Johnson City, NY, USA, 1986
Resides: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Education
MFA, University of Minnesota, 2015
BFA, Alfred University, 2008