Sarina Swalm is a Florida born artist currently working and living in Chicago.

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"Farm Shed with Grain Mill"  was made during the Han dynasty two thousand years ago, and is a relatively young ceramic artifact when compared to the Venus of Dolní Věstonice which has survived nine hundred human lifespans.  Looking at "Farm Shed with Grain Mill" through the museum display glass, I spot the unmistakable fingerprints left on the ceramic surface. Later, as I inspect my own fingerprints on a piece I have just pulled from the kiln, the feeling of the compressing of time is acute when I remember my museum visit.

The longevity of ceramic is not its most obvious characteristic as clay, but the ceramic pieces I make will last for thousands of years, and while its easier to see the compounding of choices and actions in a material object, I think of these objects as a representation of the intangible layering of actions and choices we make daily that build the object of our lives. 

This is also reflected in colored pencil, each drawing a compiling of slow consistent layers, and while it looks like nothing is changing, over hours of work a finished drawing emerges.

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​My practice focuses on the ways in which actions, decisions, and energy accumulate into a present moment that, while fixed in form, carries with it an entire history of invisible acts. My practice, whether in ceramic or drawing, honors and explores this quiet complexity—the revealing of the invisible.

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