Krista Dedrick-Lai

STATEMENT

I am a multi-disciplinary artist with a wide-ranging practice that includes painting, weaving and sculpture. I am drawn to bright colors, chunky mark-making, uneven textures, and artwork that shows evidence of the human hand. A lot of what I am thinking about when I’m making artwork, whether that’s a figurative painting or sculpture made of garden hoses and old clothes, is how to find a way through difficult circumstances or difficult feelings, into a place that is a little easier and, perhaps, even beautiful. My work is rooted in the human experience of carving out joy and connection amid a fragile, shattering world. Personal history and chronic illness inform my work. The bittersweet and often painful realities of being a woman and mother are ever present; peeking out from between the cracks like an underpainting.

Translucent, anonymous figures navigate the psychological space of my paintings. These figures build, weave, and dismantle themselves and their environments. Landscapes that are sometimes threatening and sometimes exuberant tangle with these bodies; enveloping, embracing, or spilling from within them. The construction of my fiber and mixed media works is a mirror of the way the figures in my paintings behave; creating, dismantling, and reassembling. Finding the beauty in the decay. “Treasures” trash picked by my family and I as we walk around our urban community are woven into small blankets or tucked into handmade pockets. These pieces become a record of my family’s time experiencing and metabolizing our little corner of the world, as well as a symbol of the paradoxical responsibility and powerlessness that are inherent in parenting. I paint, weave and sew bittersweet realities into art pieces; a meditation on radical joy, hope and longing.