Midcentury Monsters
In the summer of 2022, I started a series of coiled, elongated sculptural vases. As the forms evolved, they began to remind me of midcentury modernist ceramic objects. During this period, I was educating myself on facts that had surfaced first for me during the summer of 2020.
I started learning about atrocities like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, things I had never been taught in school. In recent years some state governments have make it difficult, if not impossible, for educators to present information on such events and histories of historically marginalized people. I wanted this information to be presented on the forms I had made that were influenced by art and design of the same period.
On Midcentury Monsters these maps of inequality are superimposed on the forms referencing ceramic objects of the same era. Objects that perhaps would have been on display in homes reserved only for causations are used as vehicles. They present the insidious policies that these maps promoted in the domestic setting. This history is not about one segment of the population but every citizen in this country. Governments can try to limit the teaching of these histories, but they cannot erase them. It is important we all know this history and how it has affected everyone’s lives for generations.