April Pauza
Artist Statement
I use humble everyday materials and objects in my sculptures and installations to simulate fragile moments that live in between abandonment and renewal. By subverting the idealized home, I am exploring both the physical and emotional elements of these spaces. I am drawn to materials and objects first which I then use to unravel domestic ideals of womanhood. My process includes accumulating, repurposing, deconstructing, and building with these materials. I then manipulate these objects and materials to create associations using metaphors. My work is rooted in the exploration of both personal and collective narratives about home, belonging, and memory.
Gaston Bachelard stated that “homes are in us as much as we are in them.” My concept of home is best interpreted through a lens of ambivalence. This space can be both supportive and nurturing, but also oppressive and disorienting. I embrace this ambivalence, using it to create a feeling of both familiarity and displacement within my work. This gives me room for new methods of creating in the studio to develop.
Bio
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April Pauza is a visual artist and professor from Germantown, Tennessee. She received her B.A. in Sculpture and Ceramics from Union University and her M.F.A. in Art Studio at the University of Kentucky with a focus in Ceramics and Fibers in 2020. She is a mixed media artist working within a sculpture and installation framework that unravels domestic ideals of womanhood. Her work is rooted in the exploration of both personal and collective narratives about home, belonging, and memory.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums and galleries. These museums and galleries include the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan, Alabama, Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco, CA, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, the McColl Center and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, Boom 48hr Student Neukolln Artist Festival, Berlin, Germany. She was recently awarded third place at the Howard County Arts Council, Juried Arts Maryland Biennial for her work “Don’t let your chicken’s hatch before it’s time”.
She has been an artist in resident at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art Columbia, South Carolina, Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino, California, and the Tend Artist Residency at the Walkaway House in North Adams, MA. Currently, she resides in Frostburg, Maryland as Lecturer of sculpture and gallery director at Frostburg State University.