Emily Budd

Lives and works in Dallas, TX, USA

Artist statement

My work uses dynamic material processes to examine queer temporality- ancestry, presence, and futurity. A background in bronze casting and paleontology inspires an artistic practice that uses fiery transformations to excavate reformative monuments, artifacts, and memorials as an act of queer place-making. I have used casting techniques to explore an imagined fossil record, create monuments to lost histories, capture moments of radical remaking, and document the volcanic movement of imminent forces towards change. Experience as a foundry craftsperson and metalworker taught me to navigate between structure and experimentation within a queer context, exploring the possibilities of a separated difference. Sculptural and installation work discovers genderfluid renewal, expansion, and dreamscape as an approach to challenging heteronormative hegemony and visualizing unknown futures. Bronze and aluminum components are created using my own version of the ancient lost-wax casting technique. I use wax to pull traces from found garbage, single use plastics, discarded objects, and other unwanted or ignored things. Recycled metal is melted and recast into metamorphic objects that point towards tending and flourishing, for endings and beginnings outside of linear time.

Artwork

• Heart vs Gut, 2022. Cast recycled aluminum, red wax.
• Hole Filled Flow, 2022. Cast recycled aluminum, lava rock
• Forever Queer, 2023. Cast bronze, cast aluminum, cast beeswax, cast tin
• Digging Machine (for an End of the World), 2023. Cast recycled aluminum, cast bronze, shot-up metal found in the desert, welded steel.
• Handle for a mace head from Sodom and Gomorrah, Early Bronze Age, 2021. Cast bronze, sulphur patina, finished with iron oxide and polished sections.
• Whiptail, 2021. Cast recycled aluminum, used kiln brick, pigments, cast iron, hammered bronze, granite chunks, garbage, cast resin, steel.
• Climate Patinations, 2023. Cast bronze with varying climate-created colorations. Left, Nevada (arid/desert). Top right, Ohio (humid/temperate). Bottom right, Florida (humid/subtropical).
• Memorial for Queer Rhyolite, a temporary monument to dreams in the dust, 2019. Locally sourced mine tailings, cast aluminum