Beating dead horses… waking sleeping dogs… chasing my own tail… My practice is a cycle of remembering and retelling. Stories–which may be personal, social, and/or mythical in origin–tumble into compositions that become sculpture. Their narratives are about being in love, feeling fear, weird dreams, self-sabotage, duality, violence, mystery, and obsession.
Each of my objects are an extravagant translation, seen through my eyes, compounded by my desires and regrets, and solidified in clay. I often depict the subject of each sculpture as tussling animals or an element of a landscape. They are coil-built out of earthenware, smothered in bright, warm colors and scrawled upon with crayons and pencils. The elementary mark-making is truthful and messy… the things I’m depicting are often weird, shameful, feelings that bring me back to my honest and unsophisticated internal self.
Bird Nord is an artist from Chicago, IL working predominantly in ceramics. Their work consists of hand-built ceramic sculptures that portray narrative through non-human subjects, bright colors, and simplified forms. They graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2026 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in studio arts and were a McMullan Arts Leadership Intern in Conservation and Science at the Art Institute of Chicago where they focused on researching the conservation of CRT artworks. Bird is a bicycle mechanic and avid bicycle tourist with a love for vintage, handmade-in-USA steel bicycles. Through their nascent experiences with time-based media conservation, they have discovered an overlap between the practices of bicycle repair, conservation, and artmaking, all of which embody respect, memory, and thoughtful care for the object at hand. .