Eden Collins

Lives and works in Nacogdoches, TX, USA

Artist statement

When I was a child I created houses for frogs and toads out of mud. I would search all around the lawn for four-legged friends that I could put into the houses. They never wanted to stay, and yet I kept making them homes. I think of society and social identity as a metaphor for mud house construction. We devise rules, trends, norms, mores. We place ourselves within them, then when one of us leaps out, we build new houses to maintain the rest of the toads and frogs. Slowly the shape and forms of the houses change. My artwork acts to deform the mud house into a new shape. Using playful exploration in photography, sculpture, video, and performance, it challenges notions and modes of socialization as well as the construction of identity.

Artwork