COFFEE & CONVO WITH CHRYSALIS AWARDEES

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2021 | 1PM (EST)
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
​ONLINE EVENT

March 8, 2021 | 
Meet the three Chrysalis Awardees of Excellence and hear them speak about their practice.  

​In response to the economic hardship in the arts caused by COVID, we have increased support for emerging artists through the 2020 annual Chrysalis Award. The James Renwick Alliance has granted $5,000 to the winner of the Chrysalis Awardee, three Awards of Excellence of $1000 each, five honorable mentions, and over 100 gift memberships to the Alliance for applicants.

ELIZA AU

I create art about architecture. My intent is to explore how historical ornament can be modified, abstracted and replicated to create forms that speak to our need for sacred space and the search for solitude. We search out and create these spaces to escape the clutches of reality and our own psychological turmoil. Sacred space serves as an intersection between humans and the divine, through an intimate spiritual experience, such as catharsis, epiphany, and solace.

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MAXWELL MUSTARDO

My work engages with ceramics as a polyphonic medium: one that speaks in multiple voices simultaneously. By working within simple constraints, such as the format of the mug, vase, or torus, I explore orchestrating elements of surface, form, materiality, and function. Many projects revolve around broad & intersecting reverential notions of the vessel, the body, and language. I am currently focusing on reorienting my work from medium-based abstractions towards a more thorough integration of functionality, while maintaining rigorous material explorations. 

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CHRIS M. RODGERS

I am drawn to the histories of objects, and how the ideas and stories embedded within them change over time. The object may physically change, but it is the gaze of society that can alter the meaning of the object. Throughout history the desire that people have had to create has connected makers to the world around them. But in a world that is full of the endlessly abundant commodified object how do we come to connect to a particular locale, or to understand the global world where we are now living?

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