Jocelyn Reid – Red Lodge Clay Center

Jocelyn ReidCalgary, Alberta


Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident 2013

Jocelyn Reid is a ceramic and mixed media artist from Calgary, Canada. Reid has exhibited her work in North America, Taiwan, and Europe, and was the 2021 recipient of the Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics. She has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre, the Archie Bray Foundation, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Guldagergaard ICRC. Reid is currently a graduate student at the University of Arkansas.

As reinventions of everyday items, my work highlights the extraordinary nature of the mundane. My research centers around the inanimate and often low-cost structures that do work for us as humans. Childhood items, building materials, and ephemeral objects all hold weight, emotional or otherwise. I find interest in the translation of objects into new materials: by re-creating these items, I question where value is generated or lost. The process of casting, which I use in all my work, contributes to these notions of worth. Porcelain and glaze, plaster, soap, silicones, and stone each have a specific material syntax: they can talk about fragility, play, history, and human gestures. Intentional changes in form during the casting process suggest body language in the works, making them project buoyancy, exhaustion, tenderness, or frivolity. I eulogize and humanize these objects simply by the act of reproducing them.

Through material metaphor and poetic movement, my sculptures define the banal yet remarkable rhythm of the everyday. I am interested in re-applying rules – rendering soft as hard, making sharp seem dull, manifesting common as precious. In the work, I subvert the physical and psychological value of the object to reimagine our everyday trappings. I believe this attention to our surroundings and possessions is incredibly important. In a world that is constantly asking us to move faster, I experience attention and care as a small rebellion. By creating these sculptures, I invite the viewers of my work to do the same.