KYLE & KELLY PHELPS - RACE, CLASS, AND THE BLUE COLLAR- STORIES IN CLAY

Race Class and The Blue Collar – Stories in Clay With keeping with the common theme generated by NCECA “ CURRENT.” We were inspired to produce this body of work that visually illustrates some of the “Current” challenges and struggles that plague our modern society. “Race Class and The Blue Collar – Stories in Clay” is a conversation narrated in clay that examines some of the “current” and difficult conversations that affect our society today. Clay is used as the primary vehicle of communication to help narrate difficult topics such as racism/race relations, police brutality, gun violence, poverty, homelessness, and the plight of the blue-collar working class. The work reflects the day to day challenges of everyday people…those everyday people who struggle to make ends meet, face discrimination, harassment, marginalization, or flat out overlooked (invisible) in society’s eyes. The work incorporates both the handcrafted ceramic figurative forms that are central to each narrative composition and juxtaposed with repurposed (found objects) that are site specific. We have combined gears, corrugated metal, and scrap-machined parts along with the modeled ceramic figures to create a visual narrative composition about the blue-collar experience. Abandoned industrial sites such as factories, steel/textile mills, warehouses, coal mines, and railroad yards are the primary sources where we find, archive, and repurpose, any found object to be used in our narratives. It is important for us to continue to combine ceramic handcrafted art forms together with these found objects to give the work an authentic sense of place and time. The repurposed found objects are historical artifacts from the actual sites. The work is deeply inspired by religious sculptural iconography and relief sculptures such as “The Stations of the Cross.” We recognize each worker depicted in each narrative as those who went to work every day “religiously.” The workers in each narrative take on the personification of the symbolic church congregation. We use symbolic imagery of the reflects on other current societal challenges such as police violence, immigration, poverty, and homelessness to name a few. Material found objects such as broken glass, American flags, police tape, barbed wire, and other mixed media materials, are juxtaposed with ceramic figurative forms to complete each narrative.