ARTIST STATEMENT
Saepoff and Newman’s collaborative practice explores interdependence as both a material reality and a form of resistance. Rejecting the myth of artistic self-sufficiency, they embrace collaboration, care, and vulnerability as generative forces. Through ceramics, textiles, painting, and installation, their work examines how identity is shaped through relationships—with materials, memories, bodies, and one another. Saepoff’s engagement with clay and the living presence of water reflects a desire to reconnect contemporary life with ecological systems, while Newman’s work foregrounds disability, collaboration, and the emotional residue of memory. Together, they create works that ask, “in what ways are we formed by the people, systems, and histories that touch us?” Their work draws connections between domestic objects, natural processes, nostalgia, and care, inviting viewers to reconsider connection not as a limitation, but as a condition of being.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Carly Newman (b. 1992) is a Chicago-based artist who holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2020. Working across painting, textiles, natural dyes, and social art, she centers collaboration as both methodology and resistance. Through disability visibility and activism, her work challenges ideals of artistic independence. Carly is a member of the Jewish Artist Collective Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries, Comfort Station, and the Wright Museum of Art.
Jacqueline Saepoff (b. 1995) is a contemporary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022 and her MFA in 2026. Working primarily in ceramics, her practice explores intimacy, embodiment, and the porous boundary between self and material. Through an intuitive dialogue with clay, she investigates connection, care, and the systems that shape how we relate to one another and the world around us.
© Jacqueline Saepoff & Carly Newman