Kelly Schnorr

Artist Statement

Sentimentality and disposability present a dichotomy in suburban America. I analyze suburban culture and draw on my personal experience, in an effort to locate the essence of the American experience. A lifestyle that attempts to preserve its sentimental ideas of the American dream, while simultaneously tossing out nearly everything it consumes.

Capitalism promises individuality at a cheap price, but instead delivers disposable homogeneity that is easily traded in for the new. Packaging, food, clothing, household appliances, and even keepsakes are purged daily from our homes. Garbage may be the only visible reminder of how much we spend and waste, I wonder if memories and traditions are discard as easily along with them.

These pieces become commemorations of our time and place. Much of my work is in a sweet aesthetic, transforming disposables, the discarded, and consumables into ceramic keepsakes covered in highly decorative sentimental imagery. This process allows me to inject social commentary under the guise of kitsch and sentimentality. Interjecting memories of home and family into items for consumption and disposal transforms them into lost family heirlooms.

I want to create objects of sentimental familiarity that are undermined by the threat of being easily discarded.

-- Kelly Schnorr