Saori Matsushita

Lives and works in Auburn, WA

Artist statement

My practice begins with familiar objects and materials associated with everyday memory. Working primarily with ceramics, I create sculptures that draw from ordinary objects, personal memories, domestic forms, and images that have remained with me over time. I am interested in the ways seemingly small or familiar things can carry broader social and cultural meanings. Some of my earlier works focus on representations of girls and women, domestic imagery, and symbolic forms connected to femininity. These works developed from my own experiences and observations of the expectations placed on women, particularly within the social environment in which I grew up in Japan. Through these forms, I have explored the relationship between personal memory and larger structures surrounding gender, identity, and prescribed roles. In more recent work, I have increasingly turned toward familiar objects made from paper and fabric. Paper airplanes, origami fortune tellers, notebook paper, letters, and handkerchiefs are ordinary forms, but they are also connected to memory, communication, play, and everyday life. Some, particularly the paper airplane and fortune teller, originate directly from memories of childhood and the folded paper objects that were once part of daily life. Ceramics has become an important material in this development of my practice. I am interested in the contrast between its ability to endure over long periods of time and its physical fragility. I often work with...

Artwork