Michelle Swafford

Artist Statement

Traumatic events and personal tragedies have a way of ripping one’s life into two distinctive parts: “before” and “after.” My sculpture uses the visual language of the female figure as well as that of domestic objects and household disasters to investigate the turbulent emotional spaces left “after” personal hardship.

To explore themes of both destruction and repair, I intentionally create damage in the process of making my pieces. I tear up thin slabs of porcelain clay and reassemble them into figures, realizing them as intimate garments or as small fragments of the body. I intentionally break dishes and then put them back together with shining gold lines to highlight the repairs. I subject household objects such as books, blankets and cutlery to the fossilizing effects of liquid clay and the fiery heat of the kiln, resulting in permanent transformations that call to mind the effects of flood, fire and time.

My artistic process itself is a metaphor for the process of moving through a difficult time in life. Some things are permanently lost or forever changed, while some things are rebuilt in ways that celebrate the effects of their destruction. In this work, I aim to capture the sudden destructive quality of catastrophes, as well as the painstaking efforts of repair and reconciliation.