Tracy Schneitter

Artist Statement

As an artist, the medium that is ideal for my work is clay.  I like the way it feels in my hands and its plasticity.  Clay can be a metaphor for flesh and muscle. In my recent work, the subject is human fragility and loss. 

I create fragments of the human body with representations of magnified diseases such as cancers, tumors and blood clots. My process involves layers of clay I have cut and extruded, pinched and pounded, to build textures of human tissue and cells.  I incorporate refractory wire as a linear component, and use it to suspend elements of clay.  I use washes and stains to build depth and color.  Building from the inside and moving outwards creates layers that magnify cells and tissue.

Before creating my work, I think about the environment it will be placed in.  I like to arrange my sculpted forms in locations that have associations with death, sanitation, and medicine. I often document my works by taking photos in contexts such as hospitals and graveyards.  This helps the viewer with the message of my forms. It is important to me to make the unseen and unspoken visible and heard. I choose to focus on this topic because in the time that I have lived, I have lost many loved ones by preventable diseases.