Jessica Stoller: The Grotesque Girlie

As a work exchange at The Clay Studio,I volunteer to work first fridays and other events around the studio. This past first friday I noticed the work of Jessica Stoller in particular. A graduate from The Cranbrook Academy of Art, whose recent work is pointedly sarcastic. Her beautifully crafted work is captivating for it's level of detail, and then for its ability to comicly poke at gender roles and stereotypes. The work utilizes its size, process, and materials to it's advantage. The intimate scale of the objects, draws the viewer in, and creates awe at the level of detail in the lace(created by saturating the real lace in slip and burning out the fabric). Even her process of using molds , china painting, and lustering relates back to her concept of women in gender roles, as they are all associated with womens roles in the ceramic production process of the past. The work talks about ideals of feminity and the damage of which they cause.

After seeing her recent body of work, I was curious if she had always worked on the intimate level of the figurine. I made my way over to her website and found she had experimented with many medias and sizes. Stollers creative and innovative use of material is most interesting. In some works, which look almost dessert like, she uses actual frosting and candy as a material. She plays with a different idea of the feminine, using toys, mythical creatures, and puts them in sets in which they are actors. Skeletons of unicorns, my little ponies, and laserjet printed wallpaper, in all sorts of designs and pastel colors. She takes gender associated colors, objects, and themes and turns them into perverted and sarcastic renditions of their former selves. Ponies eating the flesh of dead animals, Unicorns vainly checking themselves out in mirrors, and what appear to be my little pony orgies.

Of her earlier work I'm most interested in her large format installation work. I think what draws me to it is the way she uses shapes and colors to creat a almost superflat landscape using mixed ceramic, mdf, and painted elements. The way the forms are layered on top of one another, almost mockingly phallic. They appear to be ceramic molds of tampons, and other feminine products arranged in patters with hearts and pastel colors around them. Its both formally apealling and apalling, but Jessica Stoller's work seems to be all about contridictions, expectations, and the interactions between them.

you can check out more of her work at:

www.jessicamstoller.com