(I recently had a lace-making residency in Burano, Italy, and it took me nine hours to stitch these earrings....)
Caitlin Ezell Waugh is a sculptor, preserver, and historical restoration artist. She explores decay, vulnerability, growth and time through the treatment of glass, found objects, light, and plant material. Relationships between plants and people, especially in the context of ceremony, fertility and transition are central to her studio practice, research, and civic engagement.
Waugh received her Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College with an intersectional focus on sculpture and literary journalism. She received an MFA in glass sculpture from Tulane University in 2024. Concurrent with the graduate program she was awarded a community-engaged Mellon fellowship, which offered an opportunity to more fully integrate her studio practice with her social justice commitments.
Born and raised in Maine, Waugh moved her Paraph Studio, her one-woman sculpture and historic restoration business, to New Orleans in 2008. As curator and a primary resident-artist she co-created and co-operated the art space Potence Collective from 2017 to 2020. She has taught a range of stained glass, sculpture, mold-making and inventive kiln techniques to teens and adults for the past twenty years. She is diligently working to forge a path as a sculptural journalist.
caitlin@caitlinwaugh.com
413-230-7699 (call/text)
H. Cole Wiley and I gave a lecture that contextualizes our approach to art making. It can be found here in long format.
Artist Statement
I’m drawn to processes that demonstrate care— to craftsmanship that finds the sacred in the mundane. Mark-making and the memory of material are my primary content; data, community research and personal stories are my subject matter.
My work evolves in the expansive intersection of environmental and reproductive justice. Allyship between plants and people, especially in context with ceremony, birth and death, are central to my studio practice, research, and civic engagement. Community-engaged research informs much of my work; many of my sculptures are translations of published research, a collaborative effort to expand accessibility to critical data.
The boundaries between plant, animal and mineral are blurred in my forms. I explore how material and shape contain information and convey history. My work strives to dissolve binary thinking. Polysemy is visible throughout my work; static forms with oscillating meanings evoke time— like archives and data, they are objects in historical flux. My radically fragile glass forms demonstrate ambiguity between full and empty and growth and decay and encourage the conviction that preservation is not always the best way to demonstrate value.