Bio
Mollie Ward (b. 1995) is an artist and arts educator in upstate New York. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 2022, with a concentration in ceramics and drawing. Ward maintains her art practice in addition to her role as Ceramic Studio Manager and ceramics teacher at the Strand Center for the Arts, a non-profit art center in Plattsburgh, NY. Creating community and bolstering the arts in rural areas is at the center of her professional life, engaging with folks in all stages of their artistic journeys.
Ward has been included in multiple juried shows, including Wildfire Ceramics Studio (Missoula MT), Albany Barn (Albany, NY), Lake Placid Center for the Arts (Lake Placid, NY), 2023 Art Hop (Burlington, VT).
photo credit Nicole Driscoll
Artist Statement
My work is an examination of my relationship with my body and the parts of myself I feel insecure about. I build body-like ceramic sculptures and large figurative pastel drawings. With varying levels of description and abstraction, these works are self-referential. The two mediums I work with offer different iterations of the same internal conversation, focusing on the rolls and folds of the body that I have been conditioned to dislike. I also analyze physical discomfort, depicting the way the body interacts with its environment. Heat rash, razor burn and chafing are all uncomfortable illustrations of these interactions. As a person who has struggled with a disconnection from my body, often feeling at odds with my physicality, I find that making this work has helped rewire my brain when looking at my naked body and helps me move past this internal dialog. I am creating objects to hold this discomfort, removing it from the physical body altogether, ultimately creating an object of celebration and sometimes humor.