Alisha Porter
Duration: September-december 2020
Alicia Porter addresses materiality and her bodily experiences. She utilizes progressive plaster mold processes, glaze and clay body formulations, and surface design and texture techniques to address the materiality of her queer body via the materiality of ceramics. Plaster molds taken of her body and functional wares will be joined and adorned with surface design to produce intriguing forms that lead to subversive understandings.
During Alicia’s time in New Harmony she hopes to continue developing a portfolio, creating professional level practices, valuing critical engagements, and developing community expanding my artist practice with purpose.
quick facts
How many years have you been working as a clay artist? 2 years. I took my first clay section at New Mexico State University with Joshua Clark in the Fall of 2018 and in Summer 2019 found additional studio space at Dona Ana Community College with Glenn Schwaiger totaling 9 sections across 2 years.
What is your main clay body that you currently use? High fire stoneware.
What is the primary method you use for building your work? Slip-casting, slab-building, and throwing. In that order but I dream about throwing the most.
What is your favorite studio tool? Pottery wheel/kiln. Just one favorite?
Do you have any future clay wishes or dreams? My future clay wishes and dreams are that I will always be able to lose and find myself in this material that I love. I want to make ceramic forms while offering personal narrative in hopes of creating opportunity for critical understandings as a social activist. I have a background in teaching so teaching others about the materiality of ceramics while maintaining my own practice seems most ideal at this point-I love the energy found in the undergraduate and community college studios I have found myself in. I know community is key in this respect and will strive to find these spaces to create from.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As artist and activist, I craft ceramic objects both fine and functional as mechanisms of revolutionary purpose revealing the materiality of my body and social constructions. Intense fascination and investigation into ceramic materiality and diverse processes empower my making of objects as a visual testimonio-the Feminista practice of sharing intimate and untold details revealing systemic injustice.
I use diverse techniques and processes producing most ceramic forms in multiples. Forms with constructions that beg to be observed, ordered, collected, manipulated, and or directed. I make objects intending to shock and captivate the viewer with complexity of construction and striking surface design leading to undeniable attraction or intrigue. I hope this fascination provokes the viewers further consideration creating a critical interaction; thus, a transcendent consciousness may occur-cognizance of the materiality of ‘others’ objectivity. With a slip-casted hat that at first glance seems real I share the complexity of my body’s performativity and binary expectations. With fascinating bricks shrouded in brick patterns seeming to bend physical space I subvert architecture of power and socialization in education and play. Balled fists on raised arms pridefully draped in distracting flabby skin share the iconography of fearless feminism while I struggle with body image. Finally, with a beautiful mug valued for craftsmanship and design held affectionately between hands, pulled close to the face, and pressed to lips of the one who truly loves it every day (the mug you will curse over when it breaks) I share my passion for this revolutionary existence.
BIOGRAPHY
BORN: albuquerque, NM, USA
Porter is an artist, queer theorist, and social justice activist living in the Borderlands of the American southwest examining the materiality of bodies and social constructions via the dynamic, diverse, and powerful lens of ceramic materiality and processes. Porter subversively crafts ceramic objects made undeniably intriguing while revealing the uncomfortable objective realities of their existence as an intersectional body. Porter started pursuing art and activism as they achieved their Bachelor of Individualized Studies from New Mexico State University in 2020. Investigating Gender and Sexuality, Sociology, Elementary Education, and Art developed their revolutionary purpose and method of art practice. Porter is actively applying to ceramic artist residency and graduate programs as professional development.