2020: Paige Van Doren
Emerging Artist Award
The 2020 Emerging Artist was chosen from the applicants to the So Fresh + So Clean student exhibition and awarded $1000.
Jury
Student Committee: Sarah Parker, Andy Lowrie
Guest Juror: Erin S. Daily and Brian Weissman, co-founders, Brooklyn Metal Works
Artist Bio:
Paige Van Doren looks to both traditional metalsmithing materials and processes well as the expansive realm of alternative materials to develop her work.
She received her BFA with a focus in Jewelry and Metalsmithing in 2020 from the University of Oregon.
Paige lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Artist Statement:
My work emerges from places in the body where trauma, memory, and time are in relationship. The work manifests primarily in the format of the necklace. Necklaces which address the neck, the chest, and the gut; sites of the body where trauma often resides. The necklaces rest over and protect these sites and translate the ugliness and complexity of living in a traumatized body, while they also facilitate healing.
To evoke the body and reflect the weight of trauma, I explore the communicative potential of material and form. I knot, cluster, smush, braid, tangle and bind material. There is a language of both violence and care embedded in these processes. To bind can be restrictive, though it can also be a gesture of tenderly holding something together.
As the work moves out of my hands to be received by others, I hope for it to offer relief, that it may help you to feel seen or heard or understood in a way that is honest, vulnerable, and human. The work seeks your empathy; to feel the impulse to pick it up and put it on, is to say, yes, this is real, this is true.
Responsibility Statement:
I lost access to my University's studio facilities this spring due to Covid-19. In response, I built a studio in my home. Establishing my own studio space brought with it questions regarding how to independently develop a safe and ethical way of working. What became clear through this process is that knowing how to reduce health hazards and sustain an environmentally conscious practice is not intuitive; it requires ongoing research and maintenance. Part of my work has been to learn about how to properly dispose of butane canisters in my area. To set up ventilation for torch work. To turn old t-shirts into rags and fore-go paper towels. These actions are small, and still, they are meaningful.
The process of developing an ethical lens has carried over into the making as well. These past months, I have worked heavily in aluminum foil which is recyclable when clean. While using alternative materials like such is one approach I take to a responsible practice, I do not fully depart from metalsmithing and the complicated material ethics of the field. However, I now have an understanding of what it can mean to approach work ethically and a commitment to continue.
Question for the future:
How do we as artists negotiate the necessity to work sustainably and safely with the need to make work that can demand process or material that has potentially harmful effects?
Donec id justo non metus auctor commodo ut quis enim. Mauris fringilla dolor vel condimentum imperdiet.