Emily Sudd

Emily Sudd is a multimedia artist working primarily in ceramic sculpture. Her work engages in conversation with still life, narrative, and abstract painting; postminimalist sculpture; hierarchies of materials and taste; and the role of the kitsch object. By traversing the boundaries between "art” objects and materials and "non-art” objects and materials, she looks to analyze the spaces occupied by art and decoration and the visual cues associated with these categories.

In Sudd's ceramic work, she has developed a unique process through which she transforms collectible kitsch ceramic objects and functional ware into fine art sculptures. After collecting and arranging various items, she subjects them all to the same firing conditions. The process produces the literal and metaphorical melting down of the materiality of domestic and artistic space. In the firing, some objects retain their form, while others melt down into fluid clay and glaze. Materials mix together creating swirls of color and pattern and globs of texture and form. Lowbrow kitsch objects merge into painting and sculpture in compositions that seem to suggest both the opposition and equalization of decoration, materials, and form.