Margaret Mount

Artist Statement

I am drawn to how distinct materials or entities can work in relationship with one another to create something new. One word to describe this potential is “sympoiesis” which means making/creating with or together. This interest could be considered similar to the concept of emergence in the sense that simpler components interact to become something that they could not be on their own.

I currently do this in my work by experimenting and combining ceramics and fabric.

Slow, mindful, and repetitive stitching is grounding and meditative. Fabric holds memories and is a reminder of cultures and histories. I use my old clothing, gifted fabrics, and thrift and salvage store finds. I try to listen to, but mostly remember and/or imagine, their stories as I stitch.

Ceramics is where my love of material, texture, and form began. It provides a space to process the organic forms I encounter in the natural world that surrounds me. I also listen to the clay as I work with it, feeling it as I try to understand where it is in its own dynamic process of change.

I started by adding ceramics to my fabric pieces and now I am adding fabric to my ceramics. My process with both fabric and clay is intuitive. I don’t exactly know where I will end up.

Bringing these two materials together feeds my love of exploration as well as playfulness. Experimenting allows me to see how ceramics and textiles can communicate with each other and create an intermingled and interconnected something, together.

The small ceramic sculptures may suggest bones, coral, driftwood, or wood knots. In one, there is the suggestion of the female form. The textured surfaces and glazes are predominately achromatic with hints of color suggesting erosion, decay, and fossilization.

In contrast, my fabric choices include bold and vibrant colors and patterns. In some, the linear wire that is wrapped in soft fabric suggests branches that emerge out of the hard solid ceramic forms. In one, I left the thread ends long without cutting them to remain connected to the process of stitching and to embrace imperfection.

For me, the interaction between stitching traditions and those of ceramics invites a new direction, a shift, a change. I hope my current work can serve as a metaphor and as inspiration for viewers to consider the possible cocreations that can result between the disparate entities that they may encounter in their own lives.