Karyn Devlin

Artist Statement

My art has evolved from the depiction of figurative landscapes into the excavation of interior ones. After years working in acrylic painting and mixed media, I’m intentionally moving into sculpture as a more permanent, dimensional language—one capable of holding memory, weight, and time. This shift mirrors my own transformation and aging process as I move from trying to attain and achieve to now observing and reflecting on place while embodying experience.

I am calling my new works “MEMORY VESSELS.” They are an ongoing series of mixed media sculptures composed of glass, clay, and ceramic, embedded with ephemera, trinkets, and found objects collected throughout my life and travels. Each vessel functions as both container and witness—holding fragments of lived moments that mark significant exchanges in my relationships with family and friends, and my evolution of self-awareness from adolescence through adulthood.

The embedded objects—military dog tags, worn jewelry, game pieces, buttons, miniature book reproductions, watches, camera components, and glass bottles - operate as symbolic anchors. They are deliberate markers of decision, resilience, inheritance, and movement. Together, they trace moments of reckoning and resolve, illustrating how personal history is not left behind, but carried forward and ingrained.

While deeply autobiographical, MEMORY VESSELS invites viewers to reflect on their own internal archives—the objects, relationships, and experiences they carry invisibly through life. These works ask what we choose to hold, what we allow to shape us, and how meaning is constructed through accumulation rather than singular moments.

Ultimately, this series represents a commitment to permanence and continuity. The sculptures stand as a tactile record of my "becoming" while honoring the complexity of my pace of growth and the quiet, powerful ways I'm moving forward.