Erica Fitzgerald is an interdisciplinary artist that uses sculpture and traditional craft techniques to touch on topics surrounding ecology, feminism, and dominance structures. She earned her BFA in sculpture at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and is currently an MFA candidate and educator at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 

 

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Statement 

My practice activates foraged, environmental textiles as delicately woven sculptures and performances to examine human interaction and impact on natural environments. I work in natural locations using my body and textiles as materials to document similarities women share with nature and their historical stories of being dominated/domesticated within hierarchal societies.

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While examining the relationships between domesticated, and severely altered environments due to patriarchal control I strive to re-situate my personal impact on land. I use naturally sustainable and invasive plant species in historically domesticated craft forms to reflect women's connection to landscape, fertility, labor, natural environments, and the body. In contrasting natural and synthetic materials to construct vessels of assemblage, these pieces take on elements of reclaimed environments and assemblages of growth that can form in both nature and the human body.

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Touch negotiates the relationship between land and reproductive bodies. My body is left wondering how we’ve become so similar yet so separate as we occupy the same space.