Photo credit: Sterling Nelson
Artist Statement
As a child my one wish, in a genie-granting-wishes type of scenario, was for humans and everything they’ve done to disappear from the world. As an adult my feelings on this are far more nuanced, but that same fierce love of the wilderness compels my work. While in the real world, stories and facts about the interactions between humans and animals fascinate me, through my artwork I prefer to create a fantasy where nature is ascendant.
I primarily create ceramic sculptures and reliefs. Using stoneware and porcelain, I add dense detail to larger forms. Circular and otherwise looping shapes, suggesting the idea of infinity, are encrusted with wildlife and terrain details. I like to vary dimensionality in my artwork; a single sculpture may start out with an area of incised “line art” relief, progress through low or mid relief, and end up as a Baroque explosion of life bursting from the surface. In my more two-dimensional pieces, I avoid most aspects of linear perspective to create a feeling of endlessness, like a living wallpaper that never repeats.
With my current work I seek to portray a limitless Antarctic shoreline, stark but teeming with life. I repeat endless variations of what are to me the most essential Antarctic elements – fur seals, penguins, rocks, and ice – purposely making what is already a dreamlike and alien landscape (for humans at least) more explicitly surreal. This work is heavily influenced by a trip to Antarctica in 2018 as well as by religious and heroic imagery. As an interloper in their world, I could not discern what made one fur seal a local celebrity, attracting side-eye and posturing from those nearby. I’m interested in the mystery and richness of those interactions, devoid of human interference and outside our experience.
Bio
Irene Stivers Nelson is a ceramic sculptor based in Seattle. She has always been strongly drawn to nature, having grown up running around the forests and dunes of California’s Central Coast. She studied fashion design at UC Davis, mentored by fiber artist Susan Taber Avila, and while there she won a President’s Undergraduate Fellowship grant to create a surrealism-based fashion collection with sea creatures emerging from and encrusting the garments. After college, she worked in design of various forms – first bridal gowns, later graphic and UX design – before finding herself in ceramics. She began pottery classes through the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department in 2018. Irene’s sculptural work celebrates nature, with underlying themes of infinity, shifting dimensionality, and surrealism. Irene is currently assisting Joe Wilkinson in a class at Rain City Studios and will teach a relief sculpture course at Rain City beginning January 2025.
