Bio
Phoebe Zildjian was born and raised in Castine, Maine and holds a BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from Maine College of Art. Zildjian spends her life on the coast, creating work that reflects on the solitary lifestyles of Maine people. Her creative practice hinges on using landscape as a primary source; returning again and again to inspect farimilar details of her surroundings. The pieces she builds look to the land, and she can often be found monitoring the world around her, inspecting coastal details such as stone, salt bleached structures, and the ebb and flow of the tide in an effort to uplift the landscape as a historical document.
Artist Statement
I build miniature architectural structures and sculptures with the objective of creating a sense of place in the natural world. When I am alone in different landscapes, I am at the edge of a great power that I will never fully comprehend. The architectural miniatures that I construct evoke this feeling by providing a focal point around which the viewer may connect with a solitary world of their choosing. My practice relies on time spent gathering references from the land around me. Through research into architectural theory, spatial psychology, historical primary sources, and direct interaction with the Maine landscape, I seek to collect and reuse the simple genius of historic carpentry and functional landscape alteration. In my quest to imply the vast, spiritual landscape that often goes unperceived in our world, delicate and ephemeral materials such as ash, paper, and burnt wood depict the impact of the elements upon these spaces. These fragile materials also serve to imply the tenuous grasp that humans have on the spiritual qualities of natural landscapes, which are sometimes accessible, but never tangible. I believe that the magic of the unseen world is always present. My personal experiences of the natural world have made it clear to me that we live at the edge of a world that is beyond articulation and perception. This unseen world holds our most intense experience of emotion and sensory perception, and we can get closer to this magic through the objects that we keep around us and the environment we live in. I believe it is the place of my work to build objects that help viewers become more aware of their ability to access this sublime side of the human experience. This work materializes as archaeological artifacts that occupy the liminal space between our mundane world and the spiritual world that flows around us, never seen but always known.