Pretty Pretty Pleas: Kristen Cliffel
Richmond Center for Visual Arts, 2017

While Assistant Curator at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts (RCVA), Jessica was an integral component in the creation of Pretty Pretty Pleas: Kristen Cliffel exhibition. She worked closely with RCVA staff to research and negotiate the artist contract and timeline, curated the flow of the exhibition and display of works, installed artworks, and developed exhibition texts, catalogues, and press content.

Exhibition Overview

Kristen Cliffel’s narrative works explore the absurd, endearing, mundane, and monumental moments of domestic life. Translating nuanced familia relationships, Cliffel’s ceramic sculptures delve into the drama of fairytales, the magic of archetypal myths, and the taunting, all-too-quick passage of time. Investigating identity through the lens of mother-child relationships, Cliffel’s work find historical context through compassion with a range of diverse artists, from Louis Bourgeois to Mary Kelly and Michelle Grabner, each of whom has examined the competing demands of raising a family and simultaneously nurturing a creative practice.

Humoring and heartbreaking, Cliffel’s visual metaphors extract and isolate specific events to reveal a coded account of maternal roles that, in the artist’s own words, “both trouble and delight me.” Evoking an elusive sense of tension, friction appears to dissolve on the smooth seductive surfaces of Cliffel’s sculptures. Ranging from a crown bejeweled with minature vignettes recounting the unpredictable nature of family life, to an empty bird’s nest, to hundreds of handmade ceramic flowers. Cliffel’s ceramic works confront myriad cyclical phases of growth and change.