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Statement
I use utilitarian materials to construct sculptural and installation experiments eliciting playful precariousness, acceptance to openness, understated beauty achieved through raw materiality, and often posing contradictory ideals. Challenging the status quo, my built compositions highlight the imperfect, overlooked, and dismissed, while pushing the capabilities and perception of their humble materials—lessons I learned from Marcel Duchamp, Eva Hesse and my Greek father—which might include fiberfill, vitamin capsules, masking paper, resin, corrugated metal, reflective mylar, or bubble gum. My sensibility also draws on my academic background in mathematics, which led me to a love of the symbols, tallies, and lines used in math, and ultimately to an interest in constructing and deconstructing language through mark-making, casting, and molding. The quirky titles of my works combine with familiar and approachable materials offering an avenue for viewers to connect with my strange and playful assemblage. Bio Pappas’ sculpture and installation was most recently featured at the Boston Sculptors Gallery’s LaunchPad, the Fitchburg Art Museum, and the virtual AREACODE Art Fair in Boston. An adjunct faculty member in Art & Design at Northern Essex Community College since 2013, Pappas was also a visiting artist and lecturer at Keystone College in Pennsylvania, The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles, and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where she served as Assistant Program Director of the MFA in Studio Arts program. After receiving her BA in Mathematics from Smith College in 1987, Pappas worked in management consulting for more than a decade before pursuing art full-time. She received her MFA in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. Pappas lives in Sudbury, MA and maintains her studio at the Landing at Everett Mills in Lawrence, MA. |
photo credit and hat design: justaddppl.com