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Split

Artist Statement

There has been much worth letting go of in recent years, yet I still feel an atmospheric pull to try and tie the air back together, to weave something grounding where I am. Consumed by various disappointments, distractions, and environmental consequences, I feel the weight of distance and mourn my lost sense of home. Through this work, I am attempting to hold space for desired reconnection and a renewed voice. In reaction to the drastic changes in our communal spaces, works in Split consider our physical, personal, and political boundaries. The precariously occupied constructions create collisions of materiality: putting viewers at odds with the familiar, challenging them to confront distance and restraint, and the claims they stake.

Stacy N. Isenbarger

Artist Bio

Stacy Isenbarger’s artworks provoke a sense of tactile memory. Collisions of materiality within precariously occupied space challenge viewers to confront the sentimentality of distance and restraint. Tensions created put us at odds with comfort and the familiar, asking us to confront the air shifting around us. Through her work we are often reminded of what seems just out of reach but perhaps still worth pursuing.

Isenbarger’s creative pursuits include sculpture, installation, mixed-media drawings, student mentorship and supporting community exchange through art.

As Foundations Coordinator and Associate Professor of Art + Design at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, USA, she celebrates her opportunities to explore creative communication and empowerment. She received her BFA at Clemson University & her MFA from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia—two places she has tremendous gratitude for especially in regard to how both experiences shaped her approach to teaching. When she’s not teaching or making—and sometimes when she is— she’s usually dancing since the act continuously validates her joy of community acceptance and shaking up space. Isenbarger is a member of the Confluence Lab which engages in creative interdisciplinary research projects focused on environmental issues impacting rural communities primarily in the Pacific Northwest.

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