Message from the Cloud and Positive Anxiety are from my latest series of work reflecting the desire to escape the incessant chatter and worries of everyday life. Message from the Cloud instead alludes to the unlimited possibilities of tapping into our own “cloud” of imagination, where our subconscious reads the shapes in the sky and channels hitherto unknown dreams and desires. This figure is serene and relaxed, for even the stormiest clouds are simply a channel for water and energy to be cycled around. She calmly receives the message and continues to float on, shifting form to suit whatever interpretation will be needed next to shape this fantastical reality.

Positive Anxiety was completed during the tumult of the recent election. Hand built in the whitest porcelain and finished with china painting, it is a work imbued with complex, conflicting emotions. Though Alice’s despair is evident in her pose and the mascara that colors her cheeks, a remote hope still radiates from her eyes. One hand held over her mouth in surprise, in her other she holds a butterfly, a symbol of the ephemerality of happiness.

Juxtaposing smoothly finished surfaces with raw textures that evoke fossils and found objects, these pieces are at once optimistic and melancholy, condensing longing, loss and desire into a statement of resilience and possibility.

The biennial features many other amazing works and will be up until September 15th.

Brea Art Gallery 1 Civic Center Circle, Brea, CA 92821