Chandler Martin

Bio

Chandler Martin was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Plano, Texas. In 2015, he received his BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute. Since then, he has been actively involved with various art organizations in the Kansas City metro area, including The Belger Crane Yard Studios, H&R Block Artspace, Crane Yard Clay, and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. 

As a current studio member at the Belger Crane Yard Studios, Chandler continues to develop his figural sculptures and studio practice. His sculptures explore nostalgia in both past events and potential dreams for the future. His work acts a bridge in time, providing intangible memories with a physical form to express some of the ambiguity of nostalgia.

Artist Statement

I strive to capture memories and recreate personal events by sculpting gestural figures which carry the spirit of a particular moment in time. By depicting the actions of everyday life, I show the viewer that despite how different we may be from each other, we can connect through our collective nostalgia and past experiences. I explore my own nostalgia as well as feelings of joy and loss through carving a repeated texture on the figures. The figures are depersonalized by removing individual features, making them more relatable to viewers. These figures reveal my cherished memories, and I hope to bring out sentimentality in the viewer as well. The lack of specificity in my figures alludes to the way memory works; we remember some details distinctly, and others are a blur. We may remember the people we were with, the location we were at, or the feeling we had in the moment, but not the exact details. Like our own unreliable eyesight or memory, the initial impression of the figures at a distance may change as the viewer moves closer to the work. The tactile nature of the textures is tempting , and they need to be touched to be fully understood. My work stands as a record of my artistic expression but is full of contradictions and imperfections, just like human memory.

Exhibitions