Artist Statement
The motivation behind making my artwork comes from a deep-rooted desire to affect my world and create a positive sense of self. I completely enjoy the feeling that creating something unique brings to me. I choose glass as a medium because it is so alluring, so fragile and so representational of the human condition. The combination of material in my work allows me to play on the tension and fragility of glass as a metaphor and the rigidness of metal as a foundation to balance that fragility.
The current state of modern life is so busy, so full with tasks and needs. My work is a reaction to that white noise, that static pace of life and the over load of information. My work represents something simple, something quiet and something almost forgotten in the American way of life. My work is not over done or over engineered or loaded with connotation but remains simple, pure and quite. The process and the products reconnect me with a lost sense of spirituality in my own life and heightens my awareness of the lack of it in the world around me.
The loss of precious things, ancestral traces and meaningful talisman is concerning to me. In the objects I create, I bring those moments of reflection; I reintroduce preciousness into an object and spark a memory of history.
The Protean Series is an example of that. Protean is a word that is used to describe the nature of change and variations, the ability to readily assume different shapes and forms. The series represents the concept of taking multiple similar shapes and re-structuring them to create pieces of different emotion and meaning. Through this process, transforming and varying the structure allows me to reveal the objects relevance and preciousness. To set it out side of the realm of modernism and to limit commentary on a current issue or state. Meanwhile, allowing the object to create a historical connection with repetition, prayer and ritual.
The next major series for me right now is the Chroten Series. This series lies in close proximity to the Komboloi Series. These series have roots in spiritual artifacts that have affected my life. Chorten’s are stuppas or reliquaries and the word Komboloi come from the Greek language and means “worry beads”. Each body of work utilizes simple blown forms accompanied with minimal metal parts to recreate or refresh the concept of “special and sacred”. Simultaneously, these pieces are representing ritualistic objects and process.
Michelle Knox
Michelle Marie Knox
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