Cecelia Plympton
any/all pronouns
Rochester, NY, USA
I grew up in Rochester, NY, exploring and learning from the local craft community. I grew up skateboarding, playing the drums, and making art with all types of media. When I began school at RIT, I dropped many of those practices to focus on metal, and because metalworking is so broad I still get to have my hands in all kinds of work. I am thankful for the opportunity to pursue craft this way, and for the craftspeople in my life who have built me up. I am working on my capstone show as a senior Metals and Jewelry Design major at RIT. I use my minor in Women's and Gender Studies to inform my work. Through the study of queer history and theory I am trying to figure out how I want to add to the work that has been and is being done by queer artists and craftspeople.
“This piece incorporates an artifact of my relationship with craft, this web-like silver shape. It comes from intuitive drawings that I would do during my first year of college, when some health issues made it difficult for me to focus on school. Drawing the paths and connections in this shape would visually reinforce my meditations on how I came to the position I was in, and decide how I wanted to continue creating. I use it now to honor the work I did then to make space in my life for a creative practice.”
“Drawing the paths and connections in this shape would visually reinforce my meditations on the connections between who I've met, where I've been and what I've had that brought me to where I was."
How does your work relate to the theme connection?
What role does connection play in your creative process?
“This drawing, and the meditation that went with it, was the first part of my creative process during my first year of school. It is how I would quiet my mind, and make space to think about the creative work I wanted to put forth next."
"Focus", silver, copper, enamel, piano wire, 3" x 2.5" x .5", 2024What connection(s) does your queerness make to the world around you?
“My queerness connects to how I view my world. I view everything through an intersectional lens, and with more curiosity about things than assumptions. I think my queerness also manifests in how I view myself and in my thoughts of how people think about me. I measure myself only against standards I set, and I try to be genuine with everyone. I can recognize more of my identity, because of the fact that I accept myself for being queer and because of the dedication I have to living out my queerness fully. My queerness is connected to my community through the way I am able to demonstrate queer love, acceptance and strength toward my peers and how they demonstrate their queerness around me, affecting the view I have of the queer experience."
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“This work is connected to all the ways that my practice has been nurtured. I learned my planning framework and the magic of making samples from my professor Laurel Fulton, and my other professor Carlos Caballero-Perez demonstrated what it is to have an evolving relationship with a piece and to engineer on the fly. They booth opened me up to the idea of sharing more of my personal narratives through my work. I made samples for this piece and while this made me feel confident as I approached it, I still ran into a hiccup with the mechanism that needed to be resolved mid-production. I, myself, have also put a lot of time into shaping my practice through research and through this practice of drawing and meditation, which I honor here by including that intuitive drawing in the design."