Descendant (Laurel with Widow and Oyster under Perennial)
No Longer Available
Completed
2024
Medium
Extruded and Coiled Epoxy Clay through Dyed Cane Webbing
Dimensions
23" x 28" x 17"
Description
I combine natural woven rattan with artificial epoxies to create intricately patterned sculptures. Captivated by the strange and transient nature of botany, mysticism, and augmented reality I graft the organic with the automated. Constructing a form of mechanical biology, the sculptures swirling trajectory offer the potential to bloom. Through traditional textile patternmaking and a propensity for science fiction, the work conjures up the celestial and the engineered. Derived from the Rattan Palm, the core material becomes reference to both plant and body. Although considered handicrafts, the sculptures transform their organic nature to create a mysterious uniformity, evocative of a digital reproduction or artificially generated form. Evoking a sensitivity for touch and reflection, the sculptures knot together intimate objects like modern talismans, augmented scholar’s rocks, and coded tapestries. Disorienting the viewer through extruded patterns, the objects are reminiscent of a Razzle Dazzle war ship or a virtual quilt. Shifting between the woven grid and loosely coiled clay, the work creates a dissolvable surface, one in which the objects are both permanent and transient.
About this Artist
Austin Ballard
Austin Ballard (b. Charlotte, NC) received an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, where he also served as an Assistant Professor in Textiles. Ballard has received numerous awards including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculpture Fellowship, a Windgate Foundation Fellowship, Kenneth Stubbs Endowed Fellowship, a Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, a Dan Bown Project Award, and the Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Studies Grant. He has been awarded full fellowships to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Ox-Bow School of Art, the Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project in New York, McColl Center for Art + Innovation and the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in Great Britain. Ballard has exhibited in numerous exhibitions, some of which include McKenzie Fine Art, NY, Smack Mellon, NY, Field Projects, NY, Beers…
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