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"If the body is a house and a body has memory, then so must the house and the shelf and the door."

"Peel back the suburban lipstick of my upbringing and you’ll find layers of quiet, familial dysfunction. On the same day, I could ride my bike down to the woods, where I built poorly made sanctuaries out of whatever debris I found littered under trees, I could find myself in my mother’s bathroom, locked from the outside. I spent a considerable amount of time handling objects of sentiment, looking keenly at the molding around the brass knobbed door. The blonde rattan shelf next to the bathtub was also a revolving fixation, cluttered by dusty relics, adorned with soaps and matchbooks from places I’d never been. I hated that room; I loved that room. Throughout the rest of my adolescence, I would face similar juxtapositions – the magnificence of Tennessee’s beautiful southern landscape and the unavoidable confrontations which peppered my family’s neglected psyche. My work is a response to life’s fated incongruities, signals to others in a coded language, and articulated through material."

"My sculpture is concerned with the relationship material has with memory, particularly as both degrade and change over time. Much of the works relate to the size of the body and are comprised of materials that reference architecture and the skeletal, structural elements within it. Discarded objects are lyrical and alluring upon discovery due to their inherent relational qualities, while newly manufactured items rich in color, clarity, and a familiar modernity wormhole back to a destructive consumer industry from which there is no escape. This conflict is softened through a gestural elegance detached wholly from the materials. More often, the finished work demands a precarity that challenges itself, the space it occupies, and viewers within its range. This liminal space is where I’m from."

— Tracy Treadwell, May 2021

Tracy Treadwell’s work has been featured in local and regional exhibitions in the Midsouth, including the 60th Annual Delta Exhibition in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Southeastern College Art Conference Exhibition in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She has been awarded the President’s Purchase Award for the 36th Annual Student Show at the University of Memphis and nominated for both the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award through the International Sculpture Center and the Yale Norfolk Summer Residency through the Yale Norfolk School of Art. Tracy is currently an UrbanArt Commission New Public Art Sculptors Fellow.

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* images courtesy of the artist