A serving of empathy

Abstract

A Serving of Empathy, my MFA graduating exhibition at the Fifth Parallel Gallery at the University of Regina (June 10–21, 2024), consists of two bodies of work. Potent Moments (2024) is a collection of sixteen ceramic plates exploring the lives of young people at moments of crisis, transition, and suspense. Fragments of Memory (2022) is a suite of ten conjoined ceramic plates that depict my mother’s train journey from Regina to Victoria in 1950 when she was fifteen. The plates are displayed on the gallery walls at eye-level. In addition, “Carousel of Innocence,” an interactive work set on a low plinth in the centre of the gallery, provides a moment of pleasure amid the tension of the surrounding pieces. Potent Moments are visual narratives painted on modified ceramic plates. Thin slabs are added to the surface while the wheel-thrown clay is soft. They are torn to produce shallow ragged openings for the painted scenes. The scenes are mostly private moments that my omniscient visual narrator invades to reveal hidden truths and to generate empathy. These paintings realize the mental images I had when I heard stories, and the mental images I created over the years when reviving the original stories. Fragments of Memory is a suite of five ceramic artworks that reconstruct my memory of my mother’s remembered experience. This artwork is about the relationship between narrative content, memory, imagination, and perceptual position; about how we try to inhabit and understand the experiences of others through imaginative means. Using conjoined ceramic forms, painted images, and ceramic shards, I create artworks that not only reconstruct what can be remembered but also describe the process of remembering. Keywords: ceramics, clay, plates, stories, heterotopias, omniscient viewer, omniscient narrator