Earthen Desire

Author/Artist Name

Cheyenne L. Pender, Murray State UniversityFollow

Files

Academic Level at Time of Creation

Senior

Date of Creation

Fall 2025

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Fruits have long been used as a metaphor for women’s bodies, reducing them to symbols of ripeness, sweetness, or fertility. Fruit is scientifically defined as “the fleshy or dry ripened ovary” of a plant. The fleshy, fruit-like forms I make explore the objectification of women’s bodies and the subjectivity of beauty and attractiveness. I study the shapes of fruit and women’s bodies, combining coil building with carving to create my work. I focus on “zooming in” on the figure to the point of ambiguity, forcing the audience to decipher what I am showing and why. I use clay for its flesh-like texture and its ability to be stretched or smoothed much like skin. I try to recreate surfaces you would see on a fruit-like form using a mixture of underglazes, stains and glazes to mimic the color and texture of the fruits, while also blending in the curves and crevices of the female body to emphasize the form of the artwork. Due to fruits and females both being living creatures it connects them not only in consumption but also in nourishment.

I experiment on how different body types in the same position differ, and model them onto the forms. Focusing majorly on voluminous figures such as stretching, bending, and fetal positions that model well onto the forms. This is inspired by Daniel Maidmen, an artist who focuses on drawing vivid, explicit female portraits; and Jessica Stoller whose desert ceramic works focus on the idealization of femininity and objectification. The closer one observes my works, the more human it seems, testing the moral consciousness of the audience.

Femininity is defined differently by people based on their beliefs in the contexts mentioned above. However, many of these are passed down beliefs, and it influenced me to encourage the audience to slow down, question what they are seeing, and reflect on the ways bodies are objectified, consumed, and judged by standards of beauty and ugliness. This process of being judged and compared to those around us is something that has happened throughout history, and many women including myself have gone through: The feeling of being the desirable fruit picked out of the others only to be used for the consumer's own wants and needs.

Advisor/Mentor

Rebecca Williams, John Utgaard, Jeane Beaver, Zbynek Smetana, Mike Martin

Description

My exhibition includes ten ceramic works made out of terracotta and stoneware clay. Each piece varies in size, color, and form. Five of the pieces are in the round sculptures while the other five are wall installations. Pieces from my works can be moved around, removed, or added to other pieces which make it to where the dimensions of the wall installations vary. For this documentation, I will use the dimensions that they were installed with.

Each piece (whether terracotta or stoneware) was under glazed using an airbrush and glazed using a low fire glaze at a higher temperature so that the crawl glaze would smoothen more on the surface.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Pender, Cheyenne L., "Earthen Desire" (2025). B.F.A. Practicum Exhibition (ART 498). 161.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art498/161