Ohio porcelain sculptor Kimberly Chapman focuses on what women endure. Her aim is to shed light on dark subjects including insane asylums, silencing women, the worldwide refugee crisis and domestic violence. Her creamy white objects force the viewer to contemplate universal cruelty and injustice through the female lens.
Hand-building, slip-casting and press-molding techniques are employed. The clay is stretched and pulled to encourage an “other worldly” appearance. Clear glaze and luster are used sparingly so not to cover the essence of the clay’s natural beauty.
Her traveling exhibition, Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission, includes 40 clay sculptures with tintypes of the artist as patient. This teaching collection has toured university galleries, museums and historical venues. Heavily steeped in research, the artist illuminates the female mental asylum experience through gold-masked women in straight jackets, trophies to male medical misogyny and patients dissolving in bed sheets.
Her most recent collection, Freedom Fighter: A Seat at the Roundtable, attacks the Roe v. Wade overturn. Fruit garlands shape a uterus with lustered IUD and ovaries on a fully armored female bust. A gauntlet heavily laden with female iconography and a Madonna and child chest shield reflect the importance of being battle ready.
Kimberly’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions with shows scheduled through 2024. She has participated in over 50 curated and juried exhibitions since her 2017 graduation from the Cleveland Institute of Art where she won the school’s most prestigious award. Prior to that, she spent three decades marketing corporations and colleges.
Her article “Out of the White Cube” was published in Ceramic Monthly, Oct. 2022. Other feature stories include: The Cleveland Arts Network Journal, Mar. 2021, Cleveland Magazine’s Community Leader, Feb. 2020, Northeast Ohio’s Canvas, Spring 2019, and Ceramics Monthly, Dec. 2018.
She is a member of numerous art organizations, serves as co-chair of the Cleveland Institute of Art Advisory Council and is a member of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Women’s Council
Hand-building, slip-casting and press-molding techniques are employed. The clay is stretched and pulled to encourage an “other worldly” appearance. Clear glaze and luster are used sparingly so not to cover the essence of the clay’s natural beauty.
Her traveling exhibition, Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission, includes 40 clay sculptures with tintypes of the artist as patient. This teaching collection has toured university galleries, museums and historical venues. Heavily steeped in research, the artist illuminates the female mental asylum experience through gold-masked women in straight jackets, trophies to male medical misogyny and patients dissolving in bed sheets.
Her most recent collection, Freedom Fighter: A Seat at the Roundtable, attacks the Roe v. Wade overturn. Fruit garlands shape a uterus with lustered IUD and ovaries on a fully armored female bust. A gauntlet heavily laden with female iconography and a Madonna and child chest shield reflect the importance of being battle ready.
Kimberly’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions with shows scheduled through 2024. She has participated in over 50 curated and juried exhibitions since her 2017 graduation from the Cleveland Institute of Art where she won the school’s most prestigious award. Prior to that, she spent three decades marketing corporations and colleges.
Her article “Out of the White Cube” was published in Ceramic Monthly, Oct. 2022. Other feature stories include: The Cleveland Arts Network Journal, Mar. 2021, Cleveland Magazine’s Community Leader, Feb. 2020, Northeast Ohio’s Canvas, Spring 2019, and Ceramics Monthly, Dec. 2018.
She is a member of numerous art organizations, serves as co-chair of the Cleveland Institute of Art Advisory Council and is a member of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Women’s Council