Erica Fitzgerald
Craft /
Fiber /
Mixed Media /
Visual Arts
Erica Fitzgerald is an interdisciplinary artist that uses sculpture and traditional craft techniques to touch on topics surrounding ecology, feminism, and mental health. She earned her BFA in sculpture at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and is currently an MFA candidate and educator at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Statement
“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again--if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”
A basket acts as a record of a time, a thought, or a feeling, carefully woven together in a monotonous ritual to create an object meant to hold or store it. My practice activates nets, tapestries, and vessels as metaphors for the complicated nature of coping with loss, grief, stress, and hardship. Various aspects of labor-making present in basketry and weaving traditions show our human bond to generational necessity and trauma coping. Each woven stitch is a small entry to hold thoughts and record feelings. Simply filing the experiences to place them elsewhere, out of sight, but most importantly, out of mind.
When life presents itself overwhelmingly, the mind craves soothing by the way of making with the body's hands.
Images
