Terri Saulin '92: Dear Believer
This most recent body of work is inspired by a combination of books that Saulin is reading; music she is listening to in the studio; and the quiet contemplation that can only come from tending a garden or a long and destinationless walk.
Opening reception: Friday, October 4, 5-7 pm
Virtual artist talk: Monday, October 28, 12 pm
From the artist:
This Summer, I re-read Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and Demian, Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Nick Cave & Seàn O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage. I also read most of Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, on the recommendation of a dear friend after we saw a contemporary opera about the life of Hilma af Klint, Hilma at the Wilma theater.
Why share a reading list?
For me it was the most useful roadmap on how to not to get stuck in a pattern of grieving and loss. I experienced the loss of my father in 2000 and the loss of my Mother in 2020. Each event marked a gradual collapse of childhood security on its own, but viewing both through the lens of closing up and selling a childhood home, felt so much heavier, even as an adult. The recent loss of one of my closest friends, a colleague, a mentor, and my personal meteor shower, was almost unbearable. Over the years I have come to view relationships with people as homes, the vessels that hold the memory of the experience of knowing someone and the splinters of self that you only get tiny glimpses of when with them.
Cue the song and title of the show, Dear Believer, a song by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros, and an architecture of optimism appears. In an interview, Alex Ebert explains why the words “Reaching for heaven is what I’m on Earth to do,” are repeated. He talks about the “act” of reaching as something pregnant with possibility and full of buoyancy. Knowing that there still may be collapse and failure, there is power and courage and much to be learned by continuing to reach forward and within, and embrace the true depth of life’s experiences.
Each vessel, sculpture and drawing is a reflection of the layered experiences between two or more relationships. The resulting objects attempt to find a space or protected shelter that permits day-dreaming, remembrance and peace.
We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.
― Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Penguin Classics, 2014.
Terri Saulin received an MFA from the University of the Arts in 2006 and a BFA from Moore College of Art & Design in 1992. Saulin is a former Moore faculty member and currently teaches Advanced Studio and Ceramics at The Agnes Irwin School, in Rosemont, PA. She is a long time member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia and The Clay Studio. Terri is the owner of No. 5 Butchie Alley, a project space that is an outgrowth of her studio, secretly tucked away on a small easement in South Philly that opens into a garden of inspiration.
Image: Terri Saulin, Dear Believer (works in progress), 2024, porcelain clay, courtesy of the artist.
