Twiggy Cercy ( They / Them )

I choose to cultivate my life experience as a queer person deeply rooted in the heartland of Missouri yielding an artistic practice that captivates time and space. I was born in Montrose Missouri, a town of a little over three hundred people, as the son of a farmer; a tradition that has sustained my family for over a century. I chose the path of healing and self forgiveness through the contemplative and grounding practice of ceramic art, which ties me to the earth similarly to the time honored tradition of farming. 

Relationships with family and myself are subject to scrutiny through a queer lens which is meant to magnify life events that made growing up in a conservative, unsupportive environment a detriment to my mental and physical wellbeing. My practice merges nostalgia with a dark lack of belonging that riddled my formative years. This contrast is enhanced by my conceptual ties to Split Space or the in-between space. I find that life is punctuated by the in-between; Birth and Death, exterior and interior self, man or woman, happy and sad. This notion of in-between space is enhanced by my neurodiversity, which serves as navigation for emotion, lack of regulation and impulsivity, and appears formally in the work through the use of even pairs, and symmetrical compositions. 

Reimagining life experience through object relationship is at the core of my material practice. I create abstract and surreal forms using clay which alludes to the permeability of time and memory. Found and crafted objects produce conglomerations of forms, texture, and pattern. My work manifests as sculptures and wearable art. Wearables have allowed me to explore my own perception of gender and belonging using my body as raw material, not unlike my approach to clay. 

The work itself is an outward self portrait of emotion, time, energy, holding space and healing to create contemplative experiences for those surrounding it. I aspire to serve as a beacon of hope for young queer artists who hail from the rural Midwest, often feeling unsupported by those they love, and to create a sense of belonging for those who feel unseen. Art is a transformative experiance that emboldens the preservation for queer spirit and identity. 

Twiggy is a queer interdisciplinary ceramics artist. They earned their BFA from Northwest Missouri State University in 2020 and their MFA in ceramics from The Pennsylvania State University in 2022. Twiggy lives in rural Oskaloosa, Kansas and cultivates their own experience of being a queer person rooted in the heart of the midwest. Their work questions the construct of gender and performance through sculpture and wearable art. Twiggy’s work focuses on a world of forms through an idealized lense, concealing and revealing objects that have been abstracted and relocated in association with other objects. Recognizable found and manipulated forms collide with imagined sculptures and photographs creating an amalgamation of color, texture, pattern and disorienting chaos.