Ancestors
Description
Asia Mathis is an artist based in Nashville, Tennessee, whose work has been showcased on a national scale. She began her relationship with clay during high school art class and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Middle Tennessee State University in 1999. Asia dedicated the subsequent years to honing her ceramics skills and creating a unique artistic style. She earned a living showcasing her work in local Nashville galleries and participating in nationwide high-end arts and craft fairs. In 2009, she welcomed her first child into the world, after which she devoted the following years to full-time parenting and homeschooling.
Asia returned to studio life in 2018 and continues her clay journey through education and consistent studio time. She has taught workshops at Buchanan Arts and Centennial Arts Center in Nashville. Her work was recently featured in the “Best of Tennessee Craft” exhibition at the Tennessee State Museum, and she is a member of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I create beautiful, thoughtful, and emotionally satisfying clay sculptures using human and animal figures, nature imagery, and abstraction. I hand-build my ceramic sculptures from stoneware clay and use engobes, slips, stains, underglazes, and glazes for my surfaces, which I build up over the course of three to four firings.
My work centers around the human search for authenticity and belonging. In my sculpting, I turn again and again towards addressing the problem of being disconnected from the land and wild creatures because, without this connection, it seems impossible to be our whole human selves. My work also addresses my understanding of our modern identity or where we are truly at home when much of ancestral culture may have dissolved, been actively destroyed, or is one in which we do not wish to be a part. This can create a “hole” in our identity, but I believe that no matter our human history, we can find our ancestors all around us – in the earth’s small and large organisms, trees, and dirt. Through this “primal memory,” we can envision and foster a future of health.
- Artist: Asia Mathis
- American-Made in Nashville, TN
- Stoneware clay & porcelain
- Dimensions: 6″ H x 6″ W x 13″ L
$900.00
1 in stock
