Elizabeth Torrance – Red Lodge Clay Center

Elizabeth TorranceOakland, California


Red Lodge Clay – Center Short-Term Resident 2015

My work addresses the reality and physicality of being bound in a body of flesh, as well as the aesthetic and gendered expectations projected upon our imperfect forms. I study and sculpt bodies, or parts of bodies, that are rarely featured in our culture, contrasting the reality of human imperfection with the idealized, stylized, and sexualized beauty that we normally encounter. The bodies that I create are cropped or truncated. This disconnection enables me to isolate portions of the body from the whole: flesh from self. They become elements in a larger aesthetic composition, still human but also viewable as form alone. Everything is pulled apart and presented to the viewer in strange and intricate tableaus.