Artist Statement
Making art is part of my pursuit of what is essential and real in life. It is a way to engage in process and connect with something more invigorating than the everyday world usually allows. It is an exploration of material and ideas, a search for answers, and an attempt to express the ineffable in form. It also happens to be fun.
My aesthetic is informed by the natural world and its forces, including a sense of motion and flow as a direct expression of spirit moving through creation, shaping the material world in its passing. I immerse myself in the making, and allow the making to guide my creative process. There may be false starts, unexpected detours, and surprise destinations, but the making is a continual journey, informed by my explorations of material, method, and form.
While I hope to make art with real visual interest and a sense of true physical integrity as objects in their own right, a more personal goal is to infuse the work with the deeper currents of presence, energy, feeling, being, connection, and time. I want to feel those qualities myself and share them with everyone else: I want the work to bring people into the present moment, to stop and realize their own experience as living beings on the earth.
Bio
A native Atlantan, Claire Lewis Evans holds degrees in studio art and communication from Georgia State University and is currently an MFA candidate in the University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History.
Claire moved to Alabama when her husband joined the faculty at UA in 2002, bringing with her an odd bag of tricks in nonprofit communications, film and video production, and metaphysical philosophy and practice. Since then, she has been an overnight radio announcer, volunteer director at the local children’s museum, TV news producer, lead staff writer and editor-in-chief for Tuscaloosa's now-defunct alternative paper and business magazine (concurrent publications), and a group meditation leader. In 2006, she joined the University of Alabama Press where she helps the press adapt to new models of scholarly communication and publishing engendered by the digital revolution.
In her time away from the office, she makes art as though her life depended on it because, in fact, it does.
Making art is part of my pursuit of what is essential and real in life. It is a way to engage in process and connect with something more invigorating than the everyday world usually allows. It is an exploration of material and ideas, a search for answers, and an attempt to express the ineffable in form. It also happens to be fun.
My aesthetic is informed by the natural world and its forces, including a sense of motion and flow as a direct expression of spirit moving through creation, shaping the material world in its passing. I immerse myself in the making, and allow the making to guide my creative process. There may be false starts, unexpected detours, and surprise destinations, but the making is a continual journey, informed by my explorations of material, method, and form.
While I hope to make art with real visual interest and a sense of true physical integrity as objects in their own right, a more personal goal is to infuse the work with the deeper currents of presence, energy, feeling, being, connection, and time. I want to feel those qualities myself and share them with everyone else: I want the work to bring people into the present moment, to stop and realize their own experience as living beings on the earth.
Bio
A native Atlantan, Claire Lewis Evans holds degrees in studio art and communication from Georgia State University and is currently an MFA candidate in the University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History.
Claire moved to Alabama when her husband joined the faculty at UA in 2002, bringing with her an odd bag of tricks in nonprofit communications, film and video production, and metaphysical philosophy and practice. Since then, she has been an overnight radio announcer, volunteer director at the local children’s museum, TV news producer, lead staff writer and editor-in-chief for Tuscaloosa's now-defunct alternative paper and business magazine (concurrent publications), and a group meditation leader. In 2006, she joined the University of Alabama Press where she helps the press adapt to new models of scholarly communication and publishing engendered by the digital revolution.
In her time away from the office, she makes art as though her life depended on it because, in fact, it does.
