Jennifer wallace fields

ARTIST STATEMENT

Jennifer Wallace Fields’ artistic practice is a process of emotional archeology: digging through our internal remnants to uncover artifacts that can be pieced together to re-construct a narrative.

Working primarily in clay, while also incorporating found objects from thrift shops and the natural world, Fields explores multifaceted concepts of memory; these can take the form of collective, shared-cultural memories or even the forgotten memories embedded into objects she collects for her works as they pass from owner to owner over generations.

Through the physical and metaphorical shapes of women, her work also examines cultural issues regarding the construct of gender roles, vulnerability, sexuality, identity, social and cultural pressures, expectations, and personal duality in the roles we play in our lives: willingly, forcibly, or subconsciously. Fields is interested in the mysteries of our primal, spiritual, and emotional connections to nature and where those connections intersect with societal and cultural constructs. Specifically, Fields examines the natural cycles of birth, death, and decay, which are experienced by all, but simultaneously detached from our full experience by manufactured cultural and social boundaries.

ABOUT THE ARIST

 Jennifer Wallace Fields is a visual artist and educator based in Springville, Alabama. She earned her BFA from the University of Montevallo where she focused on sculpture, with a particular interest in metalwork and ceramic hand-building. She has been making, exhibiting, and teaching art for the past twenty years.