Emily Detrick

Artist Statement

2006

I take inspiration from the enigmatic physical relationships between forms in nature: the perplexing arrangement, for instance, that occurs when a tree has engulfed a barbed wire fence, or a plant’s growth has displaced solid rock. Such commensurate actions result in each object changing the other in some way, and suggest a balance of power between them. A confused sense of time and occurrence is presented in these forms: while it has taken years for these delicate relationships to develop, there exists an energy in the arrangement of objects that insinuates a violent, sudden impact.

These instances in nature, along with the study of ceramic work by artists like Frank Boyden and earthworks like Michael Heizer’s, have guided me. By creating austere thrown earthenware forms then altering them with the somewhat unpredictable effects of other matter acting upon them, I capture this relationship between objects. The forms retain evidence of kinetic force acting upon them and between them, and at the same time hint at a relationship of slow change and growth, presenting the viewer with a scene that is both dynamic and static, both sudden and gradual.

 

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