Artist Bio
Mary is an artist with a current focus in painting and ceramics, who is working towards completing her BFA at Texas State. Growing up in an environment where many identities interacted with each other, her work is centered around how she explored and navigated through these situations as a Nigerian-American, and their ties to emotions throughout her life.
Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist who is working primarily with ceramics and oil paint. I’ve always equated my process to the scientific method, with every piece becoming a personal theory. I usually start with a memory of my own, or a historical moment that piques my interest and I start to develop a concept from there.
In my piece “The tumultuous trickle down turmoil” I started with the famous American era of Ronald Reagan and his Reaganomics. I consider what feelings or thoughts I want from the end piece, and research ways to translate those into a fully fleshed concept , which resulted in an amphora style illustration of the modern resulting effects from “Trickle down Economics”. The concept becomes my hypothesis, using it as my guide throughout the project.
My work is in an experimental stage, in which I explore the forms and glazes I create in order to tell the story, having to tinker with formulas and schematics. In one of these pieces, I ended up remixing the Greek illustrations with modern horror movies elements, more specifically “hell hands” which is a depiction of damned souls trying to claw their way out of the pits of hell. The hands became a representation of American citizens at the poverty level trying to escape debt, but trapped by the very “aid” that intended to help them. This work then becomes a culmination of my ideas, with this piece becoming a portrait of how America treats and creates their own “damned”.
Telling history not told and shedding light on perspectives not seen by others has always been what motivates me to create. Experimentation is my constant, being inspired by those like Cauleen Smith, who uses a playful means of implementing concepts that the viewer sees as fun and light hearted. For example, her neon installation Light up your life, in which “I will light up your life/I will light you up” flashed in brillant vegas like neon, was a commentary on police brutality, with those phrases being the last words Sandra bland would hear from the officer who took her life. Smith found a way to bring life and recognition to the chaos and unethical nature that we lay stagnant in, waking the viewer up and making them have an “active” critical thinking process, which I emulate in my work.
Education
2023 | B.F.A Communication Design Texas State University, San Marcos, TX (expected May 2023)
2023 | B.F.A Painting Texas State University, San Marcos, TX (expected May 2023)
Solo Exhibitions
2022 | Hallway Show, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
Group Exhibitions
2022 | Under the Big Influence, San Marcos, TX
Publications
2022 | Color, Hue, and The Big Blue
Employment
2021 | PREACHER AUSTIN | Design Intern