During my time at the Academy, my thinking and making shifted to being in dialogue with Rome’s persistent visual culture. I became intrigued by the artist movements of 20th century Italy, such as Arte Povera and Superarchitettura, and the design trends of that time. I came away understanding why Italians are better mediators between past and present, and how that manifests in Italian art and design. From walking long distances while observing and collecting found objects, visiting travertine mines and sheep farms, to purchasing mystery aggregate and other foreign building materials, my world became a laboratory where I experimented with scale, gesture and composition. I created sculptures and two-dimensional rooms in perspective with tape on the walls to give a supportive context for the works. What you see here are pieces of a larger, unfolding narrative that took place in my studio during my four months at the Academy, a mash-up of reflections on people, place, material and time.

Ginny Sims lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She works primarily in clay but often incorporates other materials in her installations for supportive context for her sculptures and vessels. Architectural elements found objects and the human body offer material context and talking points for her sculptures and vessels. The human body’s proximity and intimacy is a consistent subtext in her work, an interplay she believes is intrinsic to working in clay forms. Conceptually she references both the industry and the craft of ceramics, as well as her own personal history, art history, and politics, noting the myriad ways of living in-between. Her work is composite — whatever the formal elements or media—gahtered and constructed, with narratives that share a rubric across vessel, sculpture, painting and installation. As an object maker and parent, she prods at the simultaneous frailty and tenderness that seems to underlie almost everything.