Rose Letulle

Artist Statement

My work investigates the body as both material and metaphor — a site of rupture, repair, containment, and exchange. Across soft sculpture and drawing, I begin with acts of disruption: tearing, cutting, destabilizing a form. I then return to it through repetition and care, suturing the surface with thread, rebuilding what has been undone. The gesture is both violent and restorative. Destruction and healing exist within the same motion.

In my sculptural work, industrial and domestic materials — plastic, fabric, thread — are altered until they suggest something bodily: a heart, a womb, a crumpled figure, a nest-like vessel. Red seams read as wounds or veins. Forms hover between abstraction and anatomy. I am interested in this ambiguity — the moment when an object begins to feel alive.

Installation and documentation in natural environments extend this inquiry. When suspended in trees or placed within a creek, the work enters into tension with the landscape. Light refracts across synthetic surfaces; wind and water activate the forms. The materials can appear foreign — even like debris — yet they also begin to feel at home. I am drawn to this porous boundary between the artificial and the organic, the constructed and the elemental. The environment intrudes upon the work, and the work intrudes upon the environment.

Parallel to this, my figure drawing practice centers on sustained observation of the human form within a communal setting. Here, I use color, scale, and gesture to translate not just likeness, but presence. The act of drawing becomes relational — an exchange of attention between artist and model. I approach the figure not as an object to render, but as a living presence occupying shared space.

Throughout my practice, I return to interior forms — vessels, nests, bodies — spaces that evoke warmth, containment, vulnerability. I am interested in the ancient and perhaps ritualistic dimension of human connection: the way attention, repair, and embodiment carry both psychological and spiritual weight. My work attempts to hold that resonance — to materialize the tension between fragility and resilience, rupture and care, isolation and communion.