Suck/Smoke (2022)

red and white earthenware, hand-drawn underglaze transfer, glaze, terra sigillata, metal hooks, epoxy and terracotta grout dye

∆04 oxidation

The human mouth is a fascinating part of the body: it nourishes, it communicates, it pleasures. I wanted to focus on the mouth as a site where one’s lack of innocence is also at play. In the first image, suck, an anonymous femme sucks on a lollipop. She pulls the lollipop out of her mouth slowly as her lips caress this sweetness. In a euphemistic sense, this imagery of sucking on a lollipop is a placeholder for many different acts. In smoke, someone is lighting a femme a cigarette. This focus on servicing a female individual harkens to lighting a person’s cigarette as a chivalrous and caring act, assisting in the engagement of a damaging habit.