Artist Gina M.

In all my work there is a whimsy with a dark side. My personal narrative uses innocent childhood imagery like teddy bears, toys, puppets and games, to create the reactionary expressions of my inner emotional life.  I was raised by a funky and creative family.  My mother owned and operated a puppet theater where my family spent many weekends developing shows, building puppets and hosting other children's birthday parties.  Art and creativity were a way of life. 

For a child nurtured by puppets and their puppeteers, my affinity for the anthropomorphic was fashioned to help me cope and accept the divorce and divide of my family.

In college, I studied interior design and color theory. As a sideline I attended workshops and received private training in painted trompe l'oeil, faux finish, and decorative wall treatments. This educational background influences all of my art making.

I select materials based on their authenticity to my process. I choose clay because of its fragility, its relationship to the earth, and its tradition in arts and craft. I incorporate recycled materials and found objects because of their nostalgia and reference to aging, decay and decomposition. Encaustic wax and resins speak to my faux finish experience and love of historic art materials. 

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Combining assemblage with ceramics is one body of work.  Trompe l'oeil “fool-the-eye” sculptures are made of high-fired ceramic clay, oxide washes, encaustic paint and found objects. Their homespun construction and textured surfaces simulate threadbare fabric, tattered fur, and the broken button eyes of careworn, faded toys and carnival games. 

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Found objects are also in the sculpture series Toy Box Kids,  creating life-sized circus friends: a menagerie of melancholy misfits with coded narratives bursting from their proscenium bellies.

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Photography, painting, and installation projects round out my artistic practice. Sometimes all the above melds together to present political commentary like my series, ”The New Normal,” where each piece of art takes a sardonic look at the subconscious conditioning of America’s children that normalizes domestic terrorism while feeding them the lie, “You just deal with it.”