BIO

Dee Clements is a process-based artist with interests in materials, craft, and ethnography. She holds an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Fiber/Material Studies and Sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her work with Nina Johnson Gallery, Kasmin, R and Company, 65 Grand, The Pit, Design Miami, Felix Art Fair, and Salone del Mobile in Italy. Clements has lectured at universities including Pacific Northwest College of Art, University of Texas San Antonio, Arizona State University, and has taught intensive workshops in fibercraft around the world including Universidad Catolica de Temuco in Chile, Haystack, and Anderson Ranch.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work explores the connections between object ethnography, femininity,  and patriarchy through the lenses of weaving, basketry, and ceramics. I draw from the history and legacy of fibercraft, focusing on the experiences of women and their exclusion from significant representation and discourse in art and craft, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day.

Starting early in my career with textile weaving, my work has evolved over the years to blend various material languages into sculpture. My interdisciplinary approach includes ceramics, weaving, painting, drawing, surface design, wood, and some metalwork, stemming from a deep curiosity about materials and form.

To find forward momentum in my practice, I often look to the past. Basketry is one of the oldest crafts in human history, with the first known interlacements of plant fibers dating back 34,000 years, predating stone carving and pottery. Through my research, I've discovered as humans transitioned from nomadic hunting and gathering communities to settlements with agricultural practices, significant societal shifts occurred. The overthrow of Ancient Mesopotamia by Babylonian King Hammurabi led to the establishment of the first laws that legalized patriarchy and ownership of women by male heads of households. It also marked the introduction of the dowry, as documented in the Code of Hammurabi. This period marked the emergence of what is known as "women's work."

My sculptures are often composed of hand-built ceramic elements, like vessels, that feature decorative and carved surfaces, incorporating textile patterns, fruits, and yonic flowers with enlarged, basket-woven stamens that protrude outward. Over the ceramics, I hand-weave corporeal basketry sculptures that sag, droop, and deflate over the sides of the ceramic vessels, using colors that I hand-dye my material with. The curvaceous, often matronly, saggy, lumpy, and bulbous forms of my woven vessels evoke an exaggerated beauty and grotesque nature of the aging (female) body.

ALSO

Dee founded Studio Herron, a design studio that operated from 2011-2023. Focused on woven textiles, furniture, and objects that combined an artistic process, traditional craft methodologies with the utilitarian and the aesthetic. Studio Herron created unique pieces for the interior design trade, commercial retail, private and public commission, gallery exhibition, and architectural installation, as well as The Studio Herron Textile Label.

*While studio Herron the design company is officially closed, the name is still legally active, and Dee often still uses it as a DBA in her professional practice.