I approach my work as a conversation.
Found materials speak to me. I
take cues from their physical qualities and respond through exploration and
reinvention, by disassembling and reassembling.
The work involves
hands-on intimacy with wax, clay and wood. The casting process is
labor-intensive and painstaking. A piece may take years to complete though
several bodies of work develop simultaneously. My sculpture, drawings,
painting and prints nourish each other.
The forms/images are of single
objects, couples or groupings. Figure and family exist in both human and
non-human forms. Ambiguous and playful, my work seeks to generate
recognition and inspire interaction.
Perci Chester
"Part of the engaging aspect of Chester’s works stems from the
interesting way they can be read as figurative art, even when our initial
sense of the sculptures is abstract . . . Chester prefers to work in between
genres of form, a decision that enhances the intellectual presence of her
work as well as intensifying the long debate between abstraction and
representation. Chester’s sense of artifice is often based upon form as it
appears in the real world; however, she treats form as an open-ended
inquiry, searching for the moment when we suddenly recognize that her
composition is to be read conventionally, as a realistic treatment of how
she sees."
Jonathan Goodman
critic/writer based in NYC whose
articles and reviews have appeared in
ARTnews,
Art in America and Sculpture.