CJ Rodgers
2024
Marketing. Psychology. Studio Art.
Working with different mediums shifts me into different head spaces where I can enjoy working with the material in its own way and connect with people who have worked with the material in the past and present.
Metal: I can peer through the welding helmet thousands have looked through, wear similar gloves and jacket, experience the same satisfaction of manipulating such a stubborn material, and appreciate the ore from which it came.
Wood: I can experience both its studiness, but also its maleability, as well as the splinters woodworkers have received for eons, and appreciation for the felled tree with which we share 50% of the same DNA—with similarities which go well beyond the structural.
Clay: I’ve only begun exploring this medium, but can already see the rich culture ceramicists have built around the process—the cyclical nature of clay from slip, to plastic, leatherhard, bone dry and back; the freedom the medium offers the artist in its changing level of maleability; the intimacy of using your hands as a primary tool; the care in controlling the speed of drying; the tragedy of cracking and exploding pieces; the excitement in the experimental testing of glazes; the feeling of permanence of a fired piece in thinking back to when it was soft and flexible; and appreciation for its long history as an art form across cultures.
Yarn: I love the repetition of working with yarn—in making crochet stitches or in weaving after the monotonous task that is setting up a loom. I get to feel the ache of hunching over a loom and the exhaustion of a repetitive task, but also the slowly building satisfaction of progress crocheting and weaving, or the ecstasy of taking a finished piece off of a loom—a feeling that I get to share with centuries of weavers in Mexico, Indonesia, Ghana and many other cultures.
I can speak similarly of the experiences of sewing, paper mache, painting, and working with plaster, but I digress. My work is focused on finding ways to integrate these mediums, so that I can continue to experience these processes whose associated feelings
transcend linguistic and geographical boundaries. My final products are often called absurdist, which reflects my focus and enjoyment of the process as well as my enjoyment for life amidst the absurd and because of it. I give my pieces human names like “Kevin” and “Albert” so as to spread this cheery absurdist feeling to my viewers and so they may build their own positive relationships with them. My hope for the viewers of my work is that they may experience even a fraction of the entertainment that I enjoy in integrating these mediums.