Thesis Exhibition: April 9 - April 12 

Reception: April 11, 5-8pm  

Whispering Wall, 2024 cast glaze blocks, P.N.E, oxides, reclaimed wood, audio (Mary's oral history), 72"x 48" x 12".  

Tool (untitled), 2024, porcelain, dowels, jacquard weaving, cotton, water from air, earth,aggregate, soybeans, 4ft x 3.5 ft x 3 ft (dimensions variable) 

Artist Statement 

My work operates within the intersection of eco-criticality, material studies, and identity. I mine my body for resources, replacing the calcium and minerals in my clay and glaze recipes. The surplus of metals/minerals in me is linked to intergenerational exposures to pesticides from agricultural farming practices used over the past 100 years in rural mid-America. My sculptures reside within cycles, broken down and reintegrated into new pieces, acting as generations within the work. This process/reprocessing exhibits how exposures stored in the body are transferred over generations—linking me biologically to the farmland and to my matriarchs. 

I use minerals and organic materials that are a direct result of factory farming. I explore the acts of relation that I have with the Iowa farmland that my family inhabited for generations. We gather water from the well to drink, to bathe in, to water the crops that we eat. I collect–interviewing and cataloging our oral and medical histories, working directly with my matriarchs. How do I carry the land with/in me? How do we reside within the cycle of matter/land, in relation to ongoing environmental injustice? 

More information about Ivy Jewell at www.ivyjewell.squarespace.com  

All photos credited to the artist.