Clay Art Center

BARBARA RITTENBERG was a dedicated and talented ceramic artist. Her untimely passing in April 2011 has left a tremendous void. Thanks to family and friends, a living legacy has been created in her memory, the Barbara Rittenberg Fellowship.

 

CAITLIN APPLEGATE earned a BFA in Printmaking and Ceramics from the Hartford Art School and a Masters degree from the University of Nebraska Lincoln in 2007. Caitlin went on to work as an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, where she was awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. During the 2008-2009 school year, Caitlin taught Drawing, Painting and Design at SUNY Cortland, and Beginning Pottery at the Cornell Ceramics Studio. The following year, she worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Visual Arts at the Penn State University Park Campus teaching Beginning Ceramics, Intermediate Handbuilding and the Figure in Ceramics.  Caitlin’s work has been exhibited both regionally and nationally; including solo and group shows at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia, The Leedy Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Sheldon Museum of Art in Nebraska.
 
ARTIST STATEMENT:

I am persistently moved to find beauty in the ragged edges of humanity. The intersection, or in some cases, collision between public and private lives, provides a place to peer through the cracks in the mask we put on for one another each day. Alone or in intimate groups, my sculptures describe the vulnerability and insecurity most of us feel beneath our perceived exteriors. I look at the ways in which we define ourselves for others, at the awkwardness found there, and at what happens when that pretense is stripped away. Despite attempts to clothe and ornament or build the insulating walls of societal perception, we are in essence naked in front of one another. When placed together, scale variation, placement, forced perspective and gaze function as means to describe the levels of participation or distribution of power that exists within a group. Through subtle distortion of form, exaggerated gesture and an emotional color palette, my work emphasizes those parts of our bodies we are individually most conscious of. I enlarge or shrink sections of the body to emphasize the awkwardness many of us feel in our own skin, the relationships we have with our own bodies, and the unconscious way in which we communicate ith others. Using information derived both from personal experience and empathetic observation, I use gestural nuance to describe the figure, and the subtle intricacy of intimate relationships. I am interested in looking at the psychologically and emotionally charged spaces between people; the dynamics of human interaction and the cultures that develop as a result of forced shared time, whether in family groups, working relationships, or situations that cause strangers to come together. I am driven to explore the profound impact one person can have on another.