Example Abstract for Visual Arts

1st Position, Eighteenth Annual Graduate Exhibition

PETER CHRISTIAN JOHNSON

College: Arts and Architecture
Department: Art
Title: Untitled.
Abstract:

My artwork functions as a personal meditation. This meditation is a reflection on my connection with, and understanding of, the world. I work primarily with ceramic material as it seems to possess so much connection with the earth and fosters a reflection of time. Historically, pots, vessels, and even statues have been used in ceremony, drawing on their capacity to hold both material and spirit. My work springs out of the tradition of the vessel, but departs from the idea of function, toward the metaphor of containment. I am interested primarily how this metaphor applies to the human body and experience. I am intrigued by the paradox of a vessel being used for both containment and for "pouring out" as it relates to the human action of being both filled and emptied.

My work attempts to reference the connection between the human body and the physical world, the internal and the external. I see the body itself as a vessel, a vessel that contains both spirit and our conscious and subconscious understanding of Self. My pieces are in a sense systems that express this convergence between our interior and exterior selves. The work is an exploration into the difference between, as well as the paradoxical union of, the act of emptying and retaining. I am interested in this point of convergence where two seemingly apposed actions can coexist. Where by losing, or emptying oneself, there is a gain rather then a loss.