Browsing by Author "O'Toole, Paige"

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    Sweet Rot
    (Alfred University, 2023-05) O'Toole, Paige; Hanes, Stephanie; Hopp, Johnathan; McConnell, Walter; Montgomery, Lindsay; Sikora, Linda; Willard, Adero
    Sweet rot is an exploration of duality. The fantasy of allure, desire and grandeur while also capturing a sharp and aggressive sense of discomfort that lives in the handling of the clay. In this work I’ve been thinking about excess — where is the point of too much and is there a point of too much. The work hovers on the line of decadence and decay. Picking at wealth and social classes and how excess in those spaces can become a kind of moral decay. A space where the value of objects and things is more important than people. There is aggression in the way I handle the clay, but at the same time there is a deep admiration, perhaps a longing. I love the way clay responds to touch. It holds the memory of mark like a cast of my hands in motion. There is comfort and control within process that does not live on in the finished work. Nothing about the outward appearance of the work is comfortable. The objects have a cloying play between beauty and grotesque that speaks to the nefarious nature of their inspiration. This body of work is a merging of opposing forces, like when sweetness begins to rot.