Charlotte Janowski

Charlotte Janowski a visual artist from Boston, MA. She completed a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Starting out as an oil painter but moving to sculpture on canvas. In addition to sculpture she creates clothing and jewelry. ***** In India there is a traditional belief that objects hold the love that is bestowed upon them. I view my work in this light, as a fusion between reliquary, sigil, and hocrux. Each piece is a 3-dimensional manifestation of poetry. The sculptures are containers for physical remains such as bones, clothing, teeth, hair, jewelry, flora, and fragments associated with memories; honoring the things others would discard. These overly-adorned visceral conglomerate objects are the embodiment of specific and transient feelings. Something as vague as a thought or dream can then be encased in time, frozen in the form of a beautiful object. My goal is to create spiritual articulations entombed with layers. I enjoy foregoing the limitation of words, and to express meaning instead through form. Feelings, memories, and experiences are more amorphous, more malleable in nature. In some of my works I also like building a bit of unease, like that after just awakening from a strange dream. Pieces hang in the balance between beauty and grotesquity, inherent in their delicacy, filthiness, and also subtle violence. They begin to be less about object, and more animate with every tooth, needle, bone, and hair.