Misty Gamble
Duration: september 2018-february 2019
Misty is one of our current artists-in-residence at the New Harmony Clay Project. During her time in New Harmony, she will continue breaking new ground and developing work inspired by research from The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J Adams, Intersectionality (coined by Professor Kimberle Crenshaw), and Feminist Theory. This work manifests in polka dot low relief wallpaper in several iterations, functional dinner sets, new hollow built forms using animal imagery and elaborate meta surface design.
Misty is continuing her creative vision while pursuing national residencies as a full time artistic practitioner. This means that residencies play a significant role in her artistic development. She is invigorated and challenged by this new context of full-time artist and resident, and we gladly welcome her into our studios!
quick facts
How many years have you been working as a clay artist? Since 2001.
What is your main clay body that you currently use? Sculpture body and casting slip.
What is the primary method you use for building your work? Burn out method, solid building, and slip casting.
What is your favorite studio tool? My hands.
Do you have any future clay wishes or dreams? I’ll continue a lengthy career as an artist working in clay.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Issues surrounding femininity and set standards of normalcy, propriety and the abject inform my work. Through my ceramic sculptures, I confront and challenge conventional standards of womanhood, beauty, and power. My work is meant to upset the status quo so that one may re-examine their own notions of womanhood.
I am interested in examining how women conform themselves to fit standards. I explore the themes of excess, materialism, and waste for a voracious consumer society. As a social satirist making feminist commentaries, I confront the most material aspects of cultural traditions forcing the viewer to rethink concepts of body, adornment, social status, personal worth, and the roles of both sexes.
The sculpted figure, multiple figural fragments, installation and theatricality provide a perfect vehicle for communicating ideas about beauty, excess and the abject. The work exposes stereotypes while simultaneously, confronting the viewer with seeing oneself in familiar meaningless pursuits. The work is influenced by my continued interest in figuration, as well as fashion, textile pattern, contemporary fetish objects, and hair. Combining formal elements of art and design to depict familiar objects of adornment such as wigs, panties, accessories and shoes contributes to the figures’ lifelike, yet grotesque feminine image. A residue or absence of the body produces an opportunity to explore new motifs, multiplicity and fragmentation of the body.
In my work, the abject, defined as that which is rejected by or disturbs social reason, and inherently disturbs conventional identity, is reexamined. Here, the abject describes the role of the feminine as decoration, wherein; indulgence and excess are symbols of the non-conventional. When provocation, beauty and the abject meet, the work becomes both contradictory and complimentary.
BIOGRAPHY
BORN: Los Angeles, California
Misty Gamble’s current work, life-size ceramic figurative sculptures, and installations of multiple figurative fragments, focuses attention on issues surrounding femininity and conventional standards. Misty is the recipient of a number of awards and grants from the Martin Wong Foundation, National Conference for the Education of Ceramic Arts, the Ellice T. Johnston Foundation, Ruth Chenven Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, Howard Kottler Fellowship, and Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist Award. Misty has been awarded long-term residencies and fellowships at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and the Armory Art Center and short-term residencies as an invited artist at Watershed, Project Art, C.R.E.T.A Rome, SACI Florence, Vermont Studio Center and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. Gamble is the co-founder of Studio Nong: International Sculpture collective and residency program. Studio Nong travels to China the US and Europe (2013, 2015, 2016) to accomplish residencies that focus on clay figurative sculpture. Misty was a full time Assistant Professor at the Kansas City Art Institute for nearly a decade and has taught throughout Italy. She has been widely published and collected and her work is exhibited both nationally and internationally.