About

artist statement

My work embraces the embodied experience of encountering beauty in the natural world. The ceramic sculptural forms exist between a dream-like state and a familiar reality. My work is a conduit for communicating encounters with beauty, mystery, and interconnectedness that are offered through being present. Through attention to the natural world, I explore how beauty can become a visceral experience.

In my most recent work, large vessels are built through the accumulation of repeated marks and small additions. The application of dots creates patterns of light, shade, and movement across the surfaces, emphasizing the relationship between individual elements and the larger forms they create. This approach extends the material and visual language of my previous work, in which thousands of individually made ceramic parts are sewn and woven together. Grounded in ceramics and extending into the traditions of craft, my work explores repetition, labor, and the transformation of many small parts into a unified whole. I incorporate additions of wild clay from environments I inhabit and find personal meaning in, allowing landscape to become part of the material language of my work. Both bodies of work consider our connection to the natural world.

Each hand-formed element is part of a larger whole that speak to a collective ecology. The repetition and accumulation of thousands of parts creates a visceral experience. The laborious act of making is deliberate, offering a quiet resistance to the increasing speed and disembodiment of contemporary life. Through this slow, repetitive process, making becomes a way of practicing presence and paying attention.

Bio

Brooke Armstrong is a ceramic artist interested in creating sculptural forms from processes tied to traditional craft. Her work uses thousands of hand made parts, creating repetitive texture interacting viscerally with our bodies. Brooke grew up in a rural mountain town in the Adirondack Park in New York State. She received a BA in Communication with a minor in Art from SUNY Potsdam. Brooke attended the University of Colorado as a Post-Baccalaureate specializing in ceramics. Brooke earned her MFA from The University of Montana. She has attended residencies at The Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino, CA and The Red Lodge Clay Studio in Red Lodge, MT. She has exhibited across the US including the American Museum of Ceramic Art in California, The Houston Center of Contemporary Craft and The DeLand Art Museum in Florida. She is currently an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas in San Antonio.

Contact
Brooke Armstrong
E-mail: armstrongbrookej@gmail.com
Instagram: brookejarmstrong