ARTIST STATEMENT
I have spent the better part of 20 years developing a language within the realm of pots. Pots were useful. Pots were comforting. They had a specific purpose. There were correct and incorrect ways to make them. Pots were about continually striving for the perfect. You didn’t have to question it. But now, I am trying to let that go, both in my life and in my artwork. Historically, pottery is as much about a vessel to hold food as they are a vessel to hold the human story. This work is a way for me to reconcile the stories about who I am as a human. It’s about letting the imperfect be present. It is about questioning. It is about the names given to me, the ways I have been asked to function within society as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter. These paintings and objects help me clarify and understand my roles in both the domestic as well as religious spheres; both in shrugging them off and in reclaiming who I am.
I am letting the chaos find its own place. I am taking the parts of me that have become fragmented, lost, hidden and placing them in a space where they have their own voice.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Emily Schroeder Willis grew up in Minnesota, where she was strongly influenced by Japanese mingei traditions, functional pottery while also being very inspired by her mother’s upbringing in a Mennonite community. Presently, her work is probing her personal experience of gender in domestic and religious spheres and her reinterpretation of it.
An artist and Associate Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Emily received her BFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and her MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has exhibited her work at the Dubai Design Fair in the UAE, the Kansas City Museum in Missouri, the Ohio Craft Museum in Wooster, the Ralph Arnold Gallery in Chicago, and many others. She is the recipient of a Jerome Fellowship from the Northern Clay Center and the Sage Fellowship from the Archie Bray Foundation. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation, the Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin, Germany, the Alberta University of the Arts in Canada and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine.
© Emily Schroeder Willis