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Entered Information
Student Name: Scarlett M
Grade: 12
Title: Dysmorphia
Description: When the outer world denies personal struggle, it leaves a silent space to absorb suffering inwards; in my past experience in ballet, this has been through body dysmorphia. The 4-foot tall coil pot is sculpted with curves and left intentionally unblended to distort the projection of me dancing. I pushed the medium to its limits on the brink of cracking, as dancers push our bodies, and this project pushed me to display my body with a total front/back view, something I would have found unfathomable just a year before. The mechanistic process of extruding coils informed my repetitive choreography, a simple barre piece, as body dysmorphia starts from the basics. The pot is spray-painted white: I still recall my first time buying stage makeup, the saleswoman telling me “ballerinas just have to be white.” Body-dysmorphia is not confined to thinness--dysmorphias exist in the culmination of straightening our curls, shaving, painting on faces, surgically sculpting our features. Dysmorphias are not distortions--they are the material manifestations of a very real and largely unspoken pressure to mold to a porcelain doll, straight-haired, thin beauty standard. Earth, like the skin of art, begins as a raw block as our skin and bodies begin as blank canvases onto which we tattoo, apply makeup, alter with plastic surgery, and attempt to sculpt and tone. Artists are choreographers. The sculptor takes a raw block of clay, claims possession over it, then configures it to dance in a ballet. Dysmorphia rotates on a pottery wheel, as I sought to make the vase spin for the audience, locked in my choreography until I stamp down the pedal and make it stop.
Dimensions: (L)23 x (W)23 x (H)36 (Inches)
Weight: 40 Lbs.
School: Francis Parker - San Diego, CA
Teacher: Jess LaRotonda
Exhibition: The 26th Annual National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition


Recognition
No awards given
Additional Work Info
Clay Vendor: Laguna
Wheel Vendor: Shimpo
Tool Vendor: Clay King
Glaze Vendor: Amaco
Kiln Vendor: L&L Kilns
Firing Temp: Low Stoneware
Atmosphere: Oxidation
Cone Number:
Entry Photos