Despite finding my non-binary identity, the word woman still sits in my mouth. I don’t chew on it. In fact, I find myself clenching my jaw all day long, protecting it. The word isn’t dirty, but it does have grit to it. It’s like potting soil. In stores, it has colorful packaging with flowers all over it. It’s something to grow your dreams in. When you handle it, it ends up under your fingernails for the next few days. I think about scientific articles with titles like, “Gardening Makes You Happy and Cures Your Depression” and how they sound a lot like the articles titled “Married men live longer; married women, not so much.” These entrenched generosities make me protective of the word and the lives that are woman. I’ve never wanted to completely shake these histories off of myself.
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In my large‑scale ceramic sculptures and installations, I explore figurative sculpture as a form of storytelling and placemaking for feminine, queer, and immigrant bodies. Our modern identities function through delocality, requiring one to choose from options that reflect only the colonist himself. Drawing on Veronica Gago’s insights in Feminist International, these artworks examine patriarchal connections between power, territory, and bodies. Considering the body as a territory, I critique our dominant American value systems and the narratives perpetuated by traditional portraiture.
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Many of these sculptures contain elements derived from historical craft practices traditionally labeled as “women’s work.” By integrating decorative and domestic handicrafts such as quilt making, cross stitching, and weaving with these works, I deliberately introduce craft languages and legacies into the patriarchal realm of the gallery space. These craft practices are steeped in American history. Pioneer‑time quilt patterns emerged as a survival tool but were also a means to document the landscape that the individuals making them were actively colonizing. The government employed Log Cabin patterned quilts as a propaganda tool for westward expansion. Meanwhile, coded quilts have been used by the Underground Railroad to wayfind toward freedom.
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How do we create modern accountability for our histories? What does it look like to critique these histories? In my practice, I search for how we repair our collective disembodiment from ourselves, each other, and the land— ultimately, negotiating the reclamation of identity
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statement
Sorrel is a figurative sculptor from Connecticut’s dairy farming region. They are captured by the lessons taught by animals, the land, and the people who live reciprocally with them. Working with earthenware clay as their primary medium, they utilize the figure to articulate queer culture and address identity politics stemming from the colonization of land and bodies across the Americas.
Sorrel received their MFA from Syracuse University and their BFA from MICA. They were previously the director of a community clay studio in Pittsburgh, an assistant for Cristina Cordóva, and an NCECA Regina Brown Fellow. They have been featured as one of the "Top 20 Sculptors to Follow" by Art is My Career along with one of “12 Contemporary Ceramic Artists Breathing New Life Into An Age Old Tradition” by Munchies Art Club Magazine. Sorrel’s work has been exhibited across North America, including the Archie Bray Foundation and Miami Art Basel.
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