Red Lodge Clay Center Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2016
Jennifer Holt’s porcelain, mixed media sculpture and installation art revolves around concepts of time, place and memory. Her work has been exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions, including: The Slip Cast Object Revisited, Plinth Gallery Denver, CO; NCECA Clay National Biennial, Louisville, KY; Full & Spare: Ceramics in the 21st Century, Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University; Clay: Time, Place & Memory, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Art Museum and won a FuLe Prize at the ICMEA Emerging Artist Competition, FuLe International Art Museums, Fuping, China.
She has been an artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Lawrence Art Center, and attended an international residency at Flicam/FuLe International Art Museums in Fuping, China. Her artwork has been published in national and international publications including “Ceramics Monthly”, “Ceramics Art and Perception” and “Dao Clayforms”. Her artwork also resides in many private and public collections, including the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts and the Fule International Art Museums.
Holt received her BFA in Sculpture from Ohio University, and her MFA in Ceramics from Southern Illinois University- Edwardsville. She currently resides in Flagstaff, Arizona where she is a practicing artist, Instructor of Art and Ceramics Studio Coordinator at Northern Arizona University.
By exploiting the fragility and translucency of porcelain, I employ the process of casting on metaphorical terms. To me, a mold creates a memory of an object, picking up the traces of its use and history. Clay has the ability to contain this memory, creating a ghost-like membrane that divides presence from absence. It is this fine line that my work explores.
I cast everyday objects in order to investigate their narrative qualities and potential to play off the collective memory of the viewer. When experiencing a memory we focus our energy and are transported to another place for a brief moment in time. Like the wall of a thinly cast form, these inner thoughts are separated from the outer world by a thin membrane.
As an installation artist working within the context of a particular place, I become a mediator between site and object, object and viewer, past and present. By combining cast objects and temporal situations, I offer a visual metaphor for the phenomena of time and memory while encouraging viewers to be mindful of their own physical placement in space and time. Like a drip of water, each second we experience becomes a memory. As we travel through space and time, we truly only exist in our memories.
Notions of place, time and the importance of our everyday experience are consistent themes throughout my work. Ultimately, I hope that my work is able to communicate the preciousness of time and the importance of our memories.