We're Still Here Micro Grant Presentations
Suffering the Silence Organization

On Saturday, November 20 at 5 PM EST, Erin Williams, Self Saboteur, Ade Inoira Raphael, Carly Riegger, and Kwame Daniels will present their work.

Both events will be held on Zoom and will be live captioned. Reach out if you have any other accessibility needs.  To register, attendees should e-mail me at erica@sufferingthesilence.org.

These three pieces will all be shown together for the time I have in the Space Lab.  I am doing a lil solo show called Invisible Test Subject.  The figure will be stuffed with colorful fabric and suspended.  The glass print will be framed and hanging.  These two will be facing each other so the viewer can see through the glass onto the ceramic figure.  The glass petri dishes with ceramics and fiber will also be in the room.  I am hoping it gives a specimen feeling to the space.

I've been printing more body pieces.  I am really excited about this new one with Kidneys and Arteries.  This piece is a print on vellum on a lightbox.  It feels scientific on the lightbox and reminds me of doctors looking at x-rays and scans on lightboxes.  I will be selling these at the sale the Dirt Bags are having.  

I also made little clay pieces to put in petri dishes for my show.  I made little cell pieces that I am going to combine with other materials like fiber, resin, and wax.  I am hoping they will look good next to a larger ceramic figure.

This week I focused a lot on getting my screens ready and printing.  I've been looking at a lot of bright neon colorful scans.  I chose to use the bright colors and also try them on some ceramic tiles too.  The next step for these is trying to print on other materials like glass!  I also will make a few more test tiles and then decide how I will paint my larger figure.

Viscous Matrix, 2021.
Ceramic, Wax, Wool, Yarn, Thread, Beads.

Project Description: 
Reclaiming the language from doctors, Viscous Matrix is a figurative representation of chronic pain from the connective tissues.  Humans are all only made of cells.  This figure is taken over by the painful cells, consuming their body.  The inside of the body is hidden, with all its mishaps and malfunctions, this narrative piece explores invisible chronic illness.  

Visual Description:
A baby blue ambiguous figure with cut out eyes and mouth.  Beads and wool trickle down from the mouth, eyes, nose, and ears.  The ceramic figure is coated in a thin layer of wax and looks like skin from a distance.  From the chest down the figure fades into bumpy cells.  The pink cells are glossy with glaze.  Ceramic spheres as cells form at the bottom of the piece.  Hanging strands of blue and purple yarn hang down with crocheted pink spheres.  Peeking out from the inside of the figure are wool purple spheres that were crocheted.    

This week we fired a raku kiln and I fired a gas kiln for my blue cell figure.   I also started the process of exposing my printmaking screens.  I am doing a colorful, multi-layer print of a body scan.  This will go with the next figure that I create!

This piece is fully decorated and now going into the kiln!  I will be assembling it next weekend or so after it is out of the kiln.  The bottom will have yarn connected through the holes and crocheted into cells.  I will also be trying to add beads to this work to mimic the dots and round cell patterns I am creating.  I thought it would go well together, but I have to see if it looks how I am imagining.  I am really excited for this part of the process.  I have a lot of fun crocheting and putting the finishing materials on the ceramic piece.

I chose to color the clay figure I made with blue slip and decorated the cells with pink and red.  The video below is me creating the pink cells!  I am really excited to dry out and fire this piece!  Next is getting it in a cone 10 kiln and then assembling the crocheted yarn with it!

This week I assembled the figure's head and shoulders.  I hallowed out the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears.  All of these hallow areas will connect to my idea of the interior of the body.  I will have the cell patter coming out of these areas.  I will hallow this piece soon and then assemble the bumpy cell forms fading from the shoulders.  After that I will focus on choosing bright colors for the cell pattern on the clay.

This week I started working in clay to begin the ceramic parts of my installations for this semester.  I have sketches for what I want the pieces to look like.  Each ceramic piece still needs to morph into cells.  I will paint them in bright colors using slip. After I get some cells started in the ceramic, I will then create cell-like parts in crocheted yarn.