Dreams
Reflecting on human longing, this exhibition of ceramic sculpture, furniture, and tile wall pieces draws on notions of heavens and otherworldly realms, myths and spiritualities of the past, merging these themes with familiar motifs of the digital age & late capitalism.
What are the hopes and dreams closest to us and how do we make sense of them in this era of consumption and global unrest? How can we tap into our own super stories to reckon with the power structures that try to capitalize on and monetize our dearest longings?
References to myth, legends, video games, commercial packaging, advertisements, and media raise questions about the ways in which we are searching for and finding our dreams, amidst the chaos and excess of our time.
The readiness of children to believe in magic infuses the work with a naive sense of idealized worlds, echoing a feeling of transcendence often present in spiritual experiences. Skies, heavenly realms, mists, mountains, tropical forests and the landscapes of dreams create a sense of the suspension of the mundane world, an escape into paradise. The tailings of the commercial and digital worlds slip in around the edges, strings not quite fully hidden behind the curtain.
Game play and storytelling is a pastime that holds personal memories for many of us and a space in which we get invested, even as an escapist diversion. Yet there is something revealed in this suspension of one world for another, reminding us how we’d like to perhaps see ourselves, as players in a great and epic story.
The global exchange of cultural aesthetics, internalized colonialism and the marketing of one’s own culture as a product are prevalent in trade and exchange throughout history and are now moving at super speeds in the digital age. In this time of an American presidential transition, power, control, hierarchy, and questions of longing, greed, and the ethics (or lack thereof) of colonial capitalism are floating in the atmosphere.
Artist Bio
Liisa Nelson was born in Montana. Raised on mountain mists, untamed forests and pristine prairies, she is a seeker of quietude and natural places, while nurturing a deep love for human and nonhuman beings, culture, languages, science, phenomenology, reading, music, art, and all forms of learning.
She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, teaching full-time while pursuing her studio practice and research.
She has been an Artist in Residence and a Visiting Artist at numerous institutions including the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute (Jingdezhen, China), and The Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China). Pottery Northwest (Seattle, WA), The Clay Studio (Philadelphia), and the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art (Great Falls, MT).
She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows across the US and in China. Her work is in several private and museum collections both nationally and internationally.
