Alyssa Graham

“The things we collect and that surround us reveal our narratives and silently map our personalities. What we leave behind becomes the physical memory of our existence. Objects contain ghosts of memories and have the power to disclose forgotten secrets.”

-Blake Williams

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Artist Statement

    My practice is centered around expressing my emotions and thoughts, through methods not entirely known to me at the time of creation. I believe objects that are created hold a certain energy and piece of the maker. Self discovery has led to me using ceramics as a way of interpreting my surroundings and related emotions. As I have grown my practice has expanded further than just clay, but clay is my true love.

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    As a child I would not vocalize my emotions but instead escape through reading and creating. The first touch of clay revealed it had the same properties as reading, a way of melting away all the bad thoughts and obsessions. Clay has always had a restorative property to me, the way it is cool to the touch and can be smoothed out or roughed up, taking the properties you give it.

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    My ideas rest in my own personal experiences and the duality of life as a whole. The bad within the good.  I constantly feel like I am being pulled in a thousand different directions at once, much like how the ocean is a slave to the weather and currents. The feeling of belonging everywhere and nowhere all at once. My past does not define me but it shapes my perceptions of the world, much like I shape clay.  Life isn't sunshine everyday, but there is beauty within the bad, as much as the good.

-Alyssa Graham