ARTIST STATEMENT
The immigrant woman undergoes identity shifts as she tries to make meaning of the “new life” for herself and her family. She carries burdens of cultural memory and morphing, an experience that far differs from archetypes offered in artistic representations and popular media such as the slant-eyed, the demure porcelain-like beauty, the hard worker, the smart professional, or the tigress.
“…see my joy marks…” is a voice that calls others to see the Asian immigrant woman’s strange but authentic joy. It is a strength and sensibility that comes with her metamorphoses. The sculpture confronts generalized depictions which tend to obliterate her worth. In hand-building it, I straddled between representation and abstraction, bared her breasts, and painted gesturally with glaze to embolden her hidden self. Clay is crucial to this work due to its malleability. Subjecting its form to kiln-burning and haptic mark-making speaks allegorically to the transformation by fire into surprising aesthetics.
This work is a continuation of a series of sculptural pieces depicting concepts of hope, longing, and joy in the journey of the Asian immigrant woman.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Howe Fun Lye-Starks is a mixed media artist who explores crossings in culture, and the themes of immersion and hybridity in the immigrant’s experience. She is a native Singaporean who moved to the United States, and graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with a BFA in Drawing and a concentration in Creative Writing. Lye-Starks creates two and three-dimensional works with a variety of media such as ink, pastel, acrylic, oils, watercolor, paper-mâché , clay, steel, and monotype print. Her style conveys change by combining abstract with representational parts, often merging the disciplines of drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and digital collaging. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at the Bonfoey Gallery, the Reinberger Gallery of the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Gallery of Cuyahoga Community College, as well as the Cafe at Waterloo Art in Collinwood, Ohio. She is a recipient of the Gund Family merit scholarship for four years, the 2019 Woman’s Art Club of Cleveland scholarship.
© Howe fun Lye-Starks