Jillian Mae Seversky

Instagram: @imaebedoingart

Website: https://www.maebeart.com/

Bio: Jillian Mae Seversky is a Non-Binary, Trans, and Queer Mexican ceramicist. They Received A BFA in Arts Education with a concentration in Ceramics from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Where they work and instruct at the Turchin Center for Visual Arts. They have exhibited at NCECA and in local galleries across North Carolina and Tennessee. Such as The Third Place, The Looking Glass Gallery, The Nth Gallery, Florence Thomas Art School, Smith Gallery at The Schaefer Center, The Watauga Arts Council, and Scenic City Clay Arts. Seversky is a past studio assistant for Andréa Keys Connell. Served as an assistant at the Utilitarian Clay Conference. In addition to being a two-time Pentaculum Resident, and a 12-week Work Study at Arrowmount School of Arts and Crafts.

Statement: Every member of my family was born in a different state. Other ancestors fled their home countries and migrated elsewhere. These grand departures and arrivals are a throughline ever-present in my work. I grew up in North Carolina, moving around often, always within the constructs of state lines, but much farther in other ways. As I drifted off to sleep as a child, I was told stories of far-off homelands. The rolling hills of Sicily, California, Guadalajara, and upstate New York blend and echo where I live now— the mountains of western North Carolina. Here I have made a home of my own, where I have been brought back to ancestral earth and red clay. The feeling of clay under my fingernails is a perfect ritual, which holds close my Mexican heritage, my Queerness, and a childhood in rural North Carolina. Within my sculptural handbuilding practice, I beckon my ancestry and honor the stories we have been told and, most importantly, tell ourselves. I am informed by my desire to unpack every moving box my family has ever sealed, the ones I lug near and far. Resting within these boxes are large accumulations of memories, objects, great joys, and deep sorrows. My sculptures lay the full breadth of our contradictions on the floor, hang them on the wall, and place them on the kitchen table. To intertwine histories with the pursuit of finding a home for them on a ledge, in a cabinet, nuzzled into couch cushions, dripping from a faucet, within your jean pocket, or adorned on collar bones. My practice is a pursuit informed by my desire to witness, to hold, and to unclog the drain, even if you must reach your hand into the murky water below.