Pushing the Boundaries of Clayis an exhibition of all Michigan-based ceramicists at the South Haven Center for the Arts from June 17 through August 5, 2023. Yve Holtzclaw is one of 15 artists in this exhibition.
Yve Holtzclaw is Kalamazoo, Michigan
Artist statement: Exploring gender as a performance, I toy with the absurdity of my early anxiety,
alienation, and self expression by depicting myself as a goose, as a deer, and as a cactus. I find myself relating to these suburban pests. For me, tension between a flatness and dimensionality reflects then surreal qualities of gender, growing up, and memory. I build layered surfaces by incorporating secondhand materials, firing my pieces repeatedly, and applying cold finishes to my work. In this process I am interested in evoking nostalgia connected to a familiar and yet unknown place, leaning into the feeling of stepping into a painting, a comic, or a dream.
Artist bio: Yve Holtzclaw is a genderqueer interdisciplinary artist and educator originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Since graduating from Massart with their BFA in 2020, they have been awarded the Donis. A. Dondis travel grant, completed a residency in ceramics at the Kirk Newman Art School and organized exhibitions both locally and nationally. They currently reside in Kalamazoo where they work and teach at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art and cooperatively run a gallery and studio space called Cloudhouse.
The fifteen artists in the exhibition will exhibit several installations as well as functional and non-functional works. The participating artists were selected by Noelle Ringer to highlight the range the possibilities the ceramic form can take and to showcase a variety of surface design, structural variation, as well as thematic approaches to the media. Exhibiting artists include Julie Devers, Adriana Sanchez, Mary Lamson-Burke, TJ Schwartz, Kaylon Khorsheed, Yve Holtzclaw, Paola Gracida, Jane Mejia-Borja, Lynne Tan, Jan Kimball, Jennifer Zona, Heidi Barlow, Noelle Ringer, Sydney Ziemke and Sean Adams.
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