empty, embodied

ARTIST STATEMENTS

Lanie Cheatham
Lanie Lee Cheatham is a queer, mixed-race, Korean American from Salt Lake City, Utah. 

For feminized and racialized Korean/Americans, is there space for the reclamation of the self within the crushing weight of fetishization and objectification? Exploring traditional Korean craft forms allows me to connect with my heritage. I do not aim to wholly reproduce but instead alter each craft from its authentic form, causing a destabilization of ideas of what it means to be Korean, feminine, human, and object. Utilizing the methods and materials available to me as a Korean American in the 21st century, I question the notion of authenticity and invite the viewer to consider the change of tradition over time and space. By reimagining traditional Korean objects, I call upon a historical and embodied memory of what Koreanness looks like. I perform the physical labor of making and doing, gaining knowledge along the way about my culture that I never had access to. I create for myself and to imagine a world that holds space for the multitudes of expressions of Koreanness and femininity.

Lea Crowley
Much of my work is centered around conjoining human form and abstract spaces through mixed media painting and drawing. I started off primarily as a figurative artist, studying drawing techniques of the old masters. In my efforts to branch out of this medium, I began creating an abstract space out of acrylic paint  and adding cross hatched drawings on top of them. I discovered I am drawn to vast, natural landscapes- most of the time mundane because of their feelings of isolation and spark a level of childhood nostalgia. I recently started to grasp my feelings towards being adopted, which I found heavily existed in my work before I had even acknowledged it. When I think about being adopted it is very much tied to my memories with my dad. I source my images by going through the collection or archives of sorts that my dad has taken across his life and mine. Transferring those into paintings is a collage process, that allow me indirectly express my emotions of being adopted.  In these “abstract” landscapes it has become a physical manifestation of my attempts to make sense of my identity. 

Sage Gordon
My creative practice revolves around my relationship with home. Memories of the spaces that made me; the recognition of past experiences that can be evoked by certain sights, smells, and sounds. Coming from a Caribbean-American family I was raised with storytelling and disjointed records guiding my understanding of who came before me. Through my artistic expression I have found a way to explore the fragility of knowing. I enjoy the process of expanding small moments from a larger scene, and studying the ways in which shapes and patterns emerge from an unsuspecting landscape. Through mixed media I work to find movement and dynamism in moments frozen in time. Memory is as prevalent as the moments we experience in the present. I explore these ideas through printmaking, charcoal drawing, sculpture, and fiber art. I am confronted with my own positionality within my environment, and how I find comfort in items removed from their natural setting. I grapple with the ways in which I claim memories that were not originally my own, memories that have ingrained themselves within me. From long established histories to the paths I take on a daily basis I find evidence of displacements that weave their way into the fabric of our lives. The various textures I incorporate into my work amplify the experience of returning to a memory. The act of remembering is not about exact recollection, and through these processes I encourage myself and the viewer to lean in the uncertainty of history.