2024, 22 x 17 x 3 in, Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, Entire Gallery, Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Unfired, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Installation view of my exhibition, The Unreal. The walls are painted with unfired clay slip. The clay beams mimic light radiating from behind each ceramic work. The beams of light are made from the same clay that the wood-fired wall pieces are made from. As the exhibition went on, the clay beams began to crack slightly. They are symbolic of the hope these wild prairie preserves bring me, yet the reality of this hope meeting constant tragedy. The back and forth that is holding and searching for hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, Entire Gallery, Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Unfired, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Installation view of my exhibition, The Unreal. The walls are painted with unfired clay slip. The clay beams mimic light radiating from behind each ceramic work. The beams of light are made from the same clay that the wood-fired wall pieces are made from. As the exhibition went on, the clay beams began to crack slightly. They are symbolic of the hope these wild prairie preserves bring me, yet the reality of this hope meeting constant tragedy. The back and forth that is holding and searching for hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, 15 x 13 x 3 in , Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, 16 x 11 x 5 in , Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, 14 x 11 x 5 in, Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, 14 x 11 x 5 in, Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, 14 x 11 x 5 in , Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2024, 19 x 17 x 3 in, Media: Stoneware, Wild Clay/Raw Clay, Firing Process: High-fire, Reduction, Wood fired, Surface: Glazed, Oxide
Behind these wall pieces are unfired slip, made from the same clay as the sculptures. As the exhibition went on, the slip slowly cracked. The beams symbolize the joy and hope these prairie inspired creatures giving me. The cracking brings a reality of trying to sustain this hope in an often harrowing world.
2023, Entire Gallery, Media: Mixed Media, Non-clay, Porcelain, Firing Process: Electric, Mid-range, Other, Surface: Non-ceramic, Pattern, Unglazed
Installation of my exhibition, Present Portal. There are three large-scale ceramic works and four paintings. The floor and window are covered in yellow vinyl patterns which mimic beams of light. These beams extend to the walls where they are hand painted.
Artist Statement
In my work, fluid and Sci-Fi “Creatures” engage with and learn from their non-human companions. I look to all the animate species surrounding me for relief from the intensely gendered and capitalist present. Living between Kansas and Missouri, I speak to the lost and critical connections between my body and the local environment. Spending time outside, I realize a greater kin I have been neglecting: the birds, water, animals, and plants that also call this place home. Using painting, ceramic, and installation practices I imagine a world where bodies are more than their physicalities and the wisdom of the more-than-human beings we share this world with are prioritized over profit.
My figurative paintings and sculptures challenge rigid notions of gender. I explore the strangeness associated with being a Queer body, the difference between the liberation felt within oneself and the ways my body is perceived by others. I embrace the fact that over fifty percent of the body is water and enjoy thinking about all the tiny, symbiotic organisms that share a home on and in the body. While the flesh is seen as a boundary for where bodies begin and end, my paintings feature watery paint that spills over these edges. The paintings embrace fluidity, a body seeping into and becoming part of its environment.
The ceramics speak to a different reality, the felt edge, a solid form in three-dimensional space. The difficulty and strength of my own Queerness is the struggle to be easily named. Not at home in the gender binary, I often feel I am living between dueling realities. When familiarizing myself with the wildly diverse prairie landscapes, dreams and fantasy take over, opening a place of possibility which expands my understanding of what is possible.
Inspired by the joy I find in Queerness and in these wild spaces, I create ephemeral installations on the gallery walls. The installations imitate beams of light radiating behind the artworks, connecting them to one another while stretching to towards the viewer, welcoming them into this world. In “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds” adrienne maree brown writes, “What you pay attention to grows.” Additionally, she shares Toni Cade Bambara’s inspirational words, “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” These sentiments fuel my current work, envisioning new ways forward in this often-harrowing world by paying close attention to how other species are surviving.
Bio
SK Reed (they/them) is an artist and curator based in Kansas City, KS. They received an MFA from The University of Kansas in 2023, an MA from Eastern Illinois University in 2020, and a BFA and BSE from The University of Central Missouri in 2014. Additionally, they have taken courses with NYC Crit Club, New York Studio School, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Reed has attended residencies and workshops at Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch, Awagami Paper Factory, MI-LAB International Mokuhanga Laboratory, and was a Wingate University Fellow at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. They have exhibited regionally at Leedy-Voulkos, United Colors, The Kansas City Artists Coalition and nationally at Ground Floor Gallery in Nashville, AUTOMAT in Philadelphia, and Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Currently, Reed is a Lecturer in The Foundation Department at The Kansas City Art Institute. Part of many curatorial projects, they run The Waiting Room (formerly Beco Gallery) in Kansas City.