Zan Knecht

Artist Statement

Thirty-three years ago, marooned in irons in the horse latitudes, I watched the curve of the earth along the vast horizon, connecting sea and sky. From the expanse of the ocean to the microscopic, the striking arcs and geometry of the world fascinate me – they helped me survive desperate days aboard my boat, mid ocean. Now, in large scale metal, I magnify elemental shapes. They come to me in water and play, in loving and caring. My work creates visual expressions of connection, survival, striving, resistance, freedom, recovery, growth, comfort and loss, exuberance and stillness, and celebration.

Curves engross me as a biologist, adventurer, Artist, and Women’s Health Care provider; They manifest in simple forms, distillations of experience of being in the world. University of Michigan trained as a Women’s Health PhD, NP, my practice engages these connections – between my own embodiment, scientific observation, and the professional care I have provided for 1000s of women – in the context of larger questions of what it means to navigate this world as a woman. What does it mean to celebrate one’s own Woman-ness and move through and beyond oppressions into support for us all? To celebrate our collective ability by weaving together our strengths to make the whole sustainable and livable?

Artistic practice that explores intersectional vulnerability is urgently important to me as the white adoptive mother of an Ethiopian female, now a teenager. Threats to Women’s bodies are slow to dissipate, especially for younger women, women of color, poor women, indigenous women, and women that disregard patriarchal restrictions. My work builds hope that women’s bodily integrity and agency can continue to strengthen even with new threats lurking.

The Envision opportunity will help me create new work at intersections Women’s embodiment and conceptual form, monumental geometry and intimate shape. I will persist in cutting and bending and welding large metal elements incorporating fabric, a traditional Women’s material. My goal is to build a series of works that work alone and together and can be enlarged to monumental outdoor sculptural scale that will interact with people, light, and wind.

To feed the process of agency creation, I’ll facilitate a workshop to explore and express issues of personal bodily integrity and re-collection. Participants will make sculptural assemblages of repurposed materials to express and commemorate their own strivings and keep as bold declarations of their own ability individually and collectively to make the world better.