Artist Statement:
I started using the term Emotion Terrariums to describe the spaces I was creating in my studio practice. A space of interior emotions turned into exterior peepshow like atmospheres. My mind and body’s feeling of isolation, melancholy, and playfulness. I learned preciousness and fragility early in life from the passing of my parents. My mother passed when I was seven and my father when I was nine. How is the mother figure different from the father figure?
What does it mean for me to have orphan and queer as identities? I am still exploring what queer and orphan mean together. They are two huge players in the work and are both meaningless without the others existence. This does not however make the work better or worse, this is just what I have to work with, my body, my mind, and my survival. Drawing parallels from both these identities I have found similarities of each experience. They transform into subject matters, material explorations, and symbolic or metaphorical gestures.
Creating colorfully dark installations has allowed me to discuss a multitude of personal issues that hope to expand past the personal narrative into broader concepts and questions of family, abandonment, and memory.
Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/charlesrice
Instagram:
BigDayCharles
Documentation Photo: Origins of Detachment
Documentation Photo: Origins of Detachment