I create mixed media sculpture that highlights craft materials such as clay, fibers, and wood. The imagery incorporates decorative references to nature, such as floral patterns, to provide a thematic context for the sculptures. Some of my projects frame the relationship of object to body through function and interaction. A sculpture’s form may reflect a gestural movement or encourage interaction with others. Enticing viewers to pick up, look through, listen to, or even consider how they would use a particular object sets up the possibility for discovery and delight.

Intentionally crafting objects by hand provides layers of meaning, at times indicating hospitality or honor, but also offering a visible contrast to digital technology. Clay’s ability to mimic other materials is featured throughout my sculptures. Projects include detailed representations of objects whose functions are both critically necessary and unfortunately politicized. In others, the function appears benign on the surface, but additional visual cues reveal the object’s specific visceral use.

Decorative and recognizable qualities of commonplace objects become useful veneers for exploring raw human experience. Slight alterations are made to familiar experiences, such as a journal entry on the interior of a teacup or a phone’s screen seen through ceramic binoculars. By luring the viewer through comfort or curiosity, both discordant and meaningful experiences within the everyday can be discovered.

Summer Zickefoose is an interdisciplinary artist residing in northeast Ohio. She received a BA in Art History and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Iowa in 2000, and received an MFA in Multimedia Art and Ceramics from the University of Florida in 2004. Her sculptures, performances, videos, and installations have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Summer has been an artist-in-residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska; Flaxart Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland; and at the Field's Project in Oregon, Illinois. She also works with a performance art collaborative, The Brick Factory. They have organized two residencies around themes of ceramics and performance: Actions + Material and The Object’s Not the Point, at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. Zickefoose currently teaches ceramics, sculpture, fiber arts, foundations, and art history courses at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.