April 2019: Clarissa Callesen

Clarissa Callesen works with found objects and recycled textiles. Her work is inspired and informed by her choice of untraditional materials. In choosing this medium, it is her objective to explore the margins and to find beauty and value in that which our society has discarded. “My work is grounded in materiality. These items range from deeply symbolic to completely disposable. I search and collect, inspect and experience, touch, and smell, contemplate and see. Looking to the way they communicate, either attracting and complimenting or repelling and contradicting. I like to think of myself as an alchemist using my caldrons of rust and plants to transform the very essence of a discarded object. I challenge myself to look critically at what our culture labels as repulsive, scary, or unacceptable. Finding the beauty and value in the trash on the ground and honoring the fertility contained within messy human struggles.”