July 2018 3D Featured Artist Felipe Maldonado

"My creative process is cultivated through self discovery and the understanding of decisions and their impacts. I embrace clay as a tool of creation and directly link my hands as a guide for creating inanimate life. This results in works that are highly influenced by the ideas of movement and connection. Taking away from daily activities, using a different mindset and allowing the clay and I to have a conversation, coming to a common ground that we can both agree on. This idea begins to touch more on the discovery of movement that my pieces show and allows my work to express a dance between myself, as the potter and my pieces, as my partner. The creation of my pieces allows the idea of pairing to come to life and give the ability for the practice of connection between people to be embraced. This connection creates a sense of place for the individual pieces and allowing people the ability to come together to connect further. The work produced is normally created in multiples to allow a consistent structure to my making and creating process; working a piece over and over again until the form and way of making it is imprinted in my fingertips."