Willow Lanchester – Red Lodge Clay Center

Willow LanchesterTyler, Texas


Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2019

Willow Lanchester is currently in her senior year as an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Tyler focusing in the area of ceramics. Lanchester’s work focuses on the creation of still life assemblies that reference her training as a potter. Additionally, the still life approach allows for exploration of the perceived ambiguity of unknown objects and their relationships to one another.

Lanchester is a member of a four part collective of women ceramic artists called the Art School Girls (ASGs) comprised of Jessica Sanders, Lilah Shepherd, Joanna Gifford, and Willow Lanchester.  Lanchester received her Associates of Art degree from Tyler Junior College in 2017 and expects to graduate with her BFA from the University of Texas at Tyler in the spring of 2020. After finishing her undergraduate work, she intends to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts degree. She has exhibited work locally and nationally. Her most recent exhibitions include an exhibition running concurrent with the 2019 NCECA Conference entitled “MUGSHOTS 2”. She also exhibited in a four woman show entitled “Components” which was the inaugural show of the ASGs in Tyler, Texas.

My current body of work is focused on investigating the interdependence of shared space. The emphasis of these pieces is not necessarily placed on the objects themselves but rather on their relationship to each other. As a result, they become investigations of how these individual forms are defined and how their definition is altered by their proximity to other objects within the grouping. Within these works, a common theme considered is how separate relationships can provide a context for each other that influences how the viewer will define and identify them. Two relationships might be nearly independent of each other but their proximity shapes the viewer’s perception of them. This could be a relationship of mutual influence or it might be a relationship of hierarchy where on object is overshadowed or dominated by the prominence of anther object. These works have become a means of contemplating the dependence and interdependence of relationships that often go overlooked and taken for granted. I am fascinated by the intimacy, indifference, distractedness, sensitivity, and vulnerability of commonplace everyday relationships, whether they are acknowledged or not. This inquiry has sparked exploration of themes of sameness, stillness, estrangement, diversity, antagonism, mundanity, and countless other considerations. Overall it has been a way of considering what it means for separate individuals, animate or otherwise, to exist in a shared space.