Corran Shrimpton

My work explores the tumultuous relationship that I and many women experience with our bodies as we navigate our beauty-obsessed culture. Drawing inspiration from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its metaphor for women’s oppression in the 1890s, I reference domestic decor to examine the internalized gender-specific cultural mandates that control women today. Rather than glossing over the sources of women’s insecurities with words of encouragement to ‘love themselves,’ my ceramic sculptures use distorted, fragmented, and abstracted feminine forms to illustrate the ways we restrict and contort our bodies to achieve impossible beauty ideals. Imagery referencing clothing, diet, cosmetics, weight loss and domestic decor prompts us to consider our ideas of beauty, their origins, and their effects.

Corran Shrimpton is from Syracuse, NY and received her BFA with a minor in Philosophy from Alfred University. She is the recipient of the Lisa Elwell Ceramic Artist Endowed Encouragement Award and has exhibited throughout the US. She has worked at the Saratoga Clay Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY and the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, FL as the Sculpture Artist in Residence.