Triana Reid
My artistic practice is rooted in my personhood and connection to the natural world. I create in poetic form, encompassing the brevity, illusions, and simplistic gravity that comes with the poem or vessel. Ecological poetics and the concept of creating homes, from the Greek “eco,” meaning “house," and “poíēma,” meaning “I make,” are of great interest in my exploration of form, content, and intent. I am intrigued by human connection or lack thereof to the more-than-human world, which is integral to our survival and beyond our daily, urban, technology-based lives. I am, as many of my generation are, intent on using my art to re-shift the Western cultural paradigm to be one that remembers Earth as our home.
I incorporate these philosophies in my ceramic pieces by allowing myself to focus on intentional form. I want my functional work to simultaneously be comfortable for one to interact with while also being a reminder of the intrinsic beauty of the material. One of my favorite works of literature is an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin titled The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In this piece, Le Guin analyzes the structure of the story, challenging the hero trope of most modern literature and exploring the idea of the story as a vessel for human understanding and growth. The format is at once a fairy tale and a philosophical essay. This piece, which I find myself reading over and over again, allows me to look at my writing and ceramics through a new lens. It opens the door to new questions of what stories are, how they should be contained, and how they have shaped human evolution. This is especially interesting to me as it relates to ecological poetics and how poems and vessels can act as carriers.
Follow me: @trianareid
