Helen Merrigan Colfer

This piece speaks to identity.
It speaks to those of us who have always felt a sense of ʻothernessʼ within ourselves.
Where others appear to feel comfortable in their own skin, we feel a sense of liminality, an
ephemeral existence that continually shifts.
A sense of insubstantiality, always on the periphery, constantly feeling flimsy, fragile, frail &
breakable.
In this body of work, I am imagining my best selfʼs or alternate selfʼs existing within this
transitory state of liminality, continually morphing, shapeshifting...
The results of endless masking, the charades we constantly conjure.
We are but smoke & mirrors.
We hide in plain sight adorning camouflage, living a chameleon type existence that
protects & mimics.
I am more than one thing at the same time.
I am a melding of humanity & nature.
I am coexisting.
I am a cloud, torn, pulled & pushed by external forces.
I am becoming a force of nature.#
Within this hybrid state I am occupying a space where the
real & imaginary meet.
I exist within both worlds, human & natural while belonging to
neither.
In this state I can achieve some sense of internal peace &
acceptance, regardless of the knowledge that I am different &
will always be different.
In whatever personae we exist we are never one hundred
percent free.
Both humans & nature are enslaved one way or another. The inclusion of chains &
manacles represent these restrictions & hardships, whether seen or unseen, real or
imaginary.
About my practice:
In my practice I work mainly in sculpture, creating narrative pieces using a variety of mixed
media, mainly resin clay, steel (both rod & sheet), aluminium, concrete, ink pigments,
enamels, gold leaf.
I engage both additive & reductive techniques, building layers over internal steel
armatures. I work mainly with a malleable resin clay, working with similar rules as others
do when working with ceramic clay.
I invest quite a bit of time carving, shaping & sanding surfaces continually as a piece
progresses so that difficult to reach areas & details are finessed before other layers are
built up. Sometimes areas are even painted before other surfaces are built up over or
around them as they would be impossible to access later.
Once a sculpture is ready & sealed for surface decoration I often use a combination of
gold leaf, enamels & ink pigments to achieve the desired finish.