photo by Lotus Porte-Moyel
Biographical Statement
Salomé Aydlett is a sculptural ceramicist based in Missoula, MT, and a 2024/2025 Ceramics BFA candidate at the University of Montana. Originally from Winona, MN and a family of artists, Salomé grew up playing with clay. It is their first language and their child-like relationship to clay remains present in their work. Salomé’s work primarily centers on the human body and its physical connection to language--how language is formal (shape based and three-dimensional) and can be integrated and manifest in the physical composition of the body.
Salomé balances their art practice with spending time outdoors and just generally trying to do as the plants do and photosynthesize. They love to ski, bike, and hike. In addition to their passion for the natural world, Salomé fosters a deep-hearted appreciation for a good bowl of soup. Soup is the main fuel for their artistic practice, and for that they will forever be grateful.
Artist Statement
I am drawn to the anatomically incorrect. By ‘anatomically incorrect’ I mean distorted, proportionally deranged, haphazard, sideways, sometimes inside-out. Really, I mean that I’ve never viewed the body in a properly scientific way: the body isn’t layers of bone and tendon and muscle and skin, but rather a collision of words and shapes. The body is a three-dimensional language. This is the perspective I try to weave into my practice: figurative sculpture as a way to explore how the human body relates to language and its expression/inexpression.
I’m drawn to clay because it has the most potential for distortion and really embodies the ‘anatomically incorrect’. It’s an incredibly malleable material, and changing how I manipulate it allows me to explore different forms of figural distortion in three-dimensional space. This is particularly important to the relationship between physical form and language present in my work: language can be formal--shape-based--and integrated into the physical composition of the body. Figural distortion and the ‘anatomically incorrect’ then arise both from the inherent nature of clay and as a portrait of how the three-dimensionalization and verbalization of language can manifest within the body.
For example, my own personal struggle with ‘two-dimensional’ verbalized language (both its understanding and expression) is inherent in my work. Melting, humanish figures combine with organic shapes to create indistinct and confused bodies that mimic the indistinction and confusion I often feel in the verbal world. Bright colours and dripping glazes mirror the ways individual words sound to me. In a way, each piece is an ongoing sentence. A diary entry. A way to deeper examine the body/language relationship and push it towards a more intelligible/unintelligible dimension.
photo by Michael Hart