PIECES OF THE PART
Alabama artist Jennifer Fields uses found objects and meticulously-sculpted clay forms to address issues of gender, sexuality, identity, the social expectations placed on women, and the sense of personal duality that these expectations create. Fields’ delicate works encourage the viewer to consider the very definition of femininity, while also simultaneously offering her own astute response; beauty, sexuality, strength, love, compassion.
While Fields’ passion for traditional ceramics is a major driving force in her artwork, she is just as likely to find inspiration while shopping the aisles of a rural antique sale. Discarded doll legs, teacups, and abandoned mementos are carefully selected by the artist for their unknown, forgotten histories, but also the retained memories that Fields believes they may possess. When combined into their final sculptural forms, Fields ignites a conduit for the connective tissue of our culture’s collective memory. Fields effortlessly navigates her primary conceptual inspirations through a balance of literary references (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), her personal relationship with Appalachian craft, contemporary artists like Joseph Cornell, Louise Bourgeois, and Jiha Moon, but also her fascination with our culture’s spiritual and mystical connection to nature.
Fields' newest body of work, Pieces of the Part, allows the viewer to piece together their own meaning of womanhood and expose the pressures faced by women on a daily basis. The pressure to be better, be happy, be nurturing, and be everything, all at the same time. Each alter, vessel, bird, or teacup that Fields creates is unique, possessing human qualities, all of which return to her subject of duality, both masculine and feminine, delicate and strong. She hopes for a world of acceptance and equality for women, no matter their physical appearance.
Tina Ruggieri
Assistant Curator
Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, UAB
2022