Artist’ Statement: Women possess raw, creative energy as well as destructive power. This split nature speaks to archetypal dualities that exist universally in the myths, stories, and legends that have reflected diverse societies’ views on women, and in turn, influenced women’s views of themselves.
My work explores the female psyche. Dualities that exist in mythical women manifest themselves everyday in the minds of the modern woman: balancing the psychological need to find the wild, assertive and instinctual self with the constraints and expectations of domesticity; the harm of certain coping mechanisms, versus the terrifying risk of letting them go; and internalized physical strength, versus the awareness of one’s mental deterioration. I address specific psychological struggles that unfold in my own mind as well as in those of close friends and family.
My figures should look as though they have just emerged from the earth, recalling many cultures’ creation myths. Raw, unglazed surfaces crate a tenuous balance, on of strength but also tension, that depict both the fragile balance of consciousness over the millennia and hint at our constant search to know ourselves.
Mosaic chips reference a rich ceramic history an tradition, but ultimately become abstract representation of the self; fragmented bits and pieces of memory, experience, people, and inherited biology that combine to form our being. Using these chips, I explore how these pieces add up and then end up surfacing in our everyday lives; sometimes exploding from the inside, and at other times slowly leaking out, revealed only by injury or painful introspection. At times they only surface in dreams, acting as a lens through which we see our world.
Symbolic settings become the backdrops for complex inner dramas to play out. These figures and landscapes take the form of busts, historically used to commemorate the public accomplishments of male patrons. I want to pay homage to women for something much more personal and private: the complexity of her inner thoughts, feelings, emotions and ambitions. A woman’s inner life is not always accessible or easily articulated to others, but it is in that place that we discover our true selves. By: Cristin Zimmer
If you are interested in contacting Cristin for more information, or to purchase her work, you can find her on the web at czimmer(dot)com.
