Dehmie Dehmlow

Bio

Dehmie Dehmlow grew up in Denver, Colorado. She makes pottery and mixed media modular sculptures that tell stories using found materials, ceramics, and other fabricated objects. She has been teaching ceramics and sculpture for about 5 years. She earned her BA in Ceramics and Pre-Medical Sciences from Colorado State University. In addition to ceramics Dehmie's background is in caregiving for elderly and adults with disabilities. Dehmie was a ceramics intern at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado before she was selected as the 2019 Salad Days Artist in Residence at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine. Dehmie then completed a Post-Baccalaureate program at Louisiana State University. She received her MFA from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2022 and then completed a residency at PrattMWP in New York. She is currently the Ceramic Artist in Residence at Lawrence Arts Center in Kansas. Dehmie enjoys being outside with her dog, Hadlee, and observing the world and people around her.

Artist Statement

I maintain an exploratory and intertwined practice as a potter and sculptor. I create abstracted modular sculptures, and assemblages that playfully reference utility, using a wide range of salvaged materials and carefully fabricated objects that are often ceramic. I am interested in the language of the vessel and make pots that span the spectrum of utilitarian to sculptural. I construct each pot thinking about how it will live and function in the world. My pottery focuses on the relationship between surface and the form. When making pottery I am largely concerned with turning the experience I have making sculptures, and what inspires them, into a visual and tactile experience that can be a part of the home in a very different way than other art forms. Similarly, my pots inform my sculptures, creating a generative feedback loop. My work, both pottery and sculpture, prioritizes composition with an emphasize on form, color, and texture to create dynamic pieces. I create architectural ceramic forms that use curvilinear volumes and exaggerated proportions that can stand alone or act as part of a larger whole made up of a range of materials. I instrumentalize the difference in the permanence, weight, and treatment of these materials to create an engaging sense of tension and dynamism. My work creates a visual narrative of the pieces being built up and broken down simultaneously. Using ceramics, salvaged and found materials, predominantly wood and cardboard, is important to my process both conceptually and technically. The pots fuel my sculptural practice and vice versa. Making the different types of work I make allows each body of work to breath. I am able to let each piece or body of work become only what it needs to be rather than feeling like all of my ideas need to fit into a singular space. Ceramics and clay were my first love and will always maintain their place at the heart of my practice. 

The sculptures I create (both ceramic and mixed media) exist to tell stories. I considerately compose my sculptures using my own sensibility of formal language, elevating the materials with a determined focus on how each disparate part connects to the next to create a whole. I have a reverence for all of the objects and materials I use, no matter their origin, and thoroughly consider how each of their forms, textures, colors, weights and other formal qualities integrate into a whole. By using materials in unexpected ways and many materials that may not usually be considered “art materials” in holistic pieces and as a greater approach to creating work as an artist, I am dismantling or flattening material hierarchy. My intention is for this to lead the viewer to reconsider the world around them and to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, ignored, and/or abject. With the use of recognizable utilitarian objects or components the sculptures take on an implied function. The work creates a space for the viewer to pay attention, and to really consider what they are seeing. The work is centered around the idea of agency and the vitality in seeing potential in the abject. This agency is displayed by the figure of the ragpicker, the djobbeur, and the bricoleur as tropes of reclamation resonate deeply with me. These figures take action with urgency in the face of adversity. I understand these figures as timeless, their responses to reality perpetually relevant in our world and my own as an individual with consistent experiences of trauma, and adversity. I do see myself as a bricoleur, though I know that I do not live with the level of deprivation that these historical figures did.

My work often takes off from the interactions I have with decaying architecture, that I collect, record, and treasure. I feel a similar sense of urgency, desperation, and adaptation in these architectural structures as I do in both the process of my work, and the actions of the ragpicker 1, djoubbeur 2, and bricoleur 3. These structures, held up solely by determination, clinging to the last shreds of life, provide moments of reciprocal buoyancy. Starting from my chest to my toes, my whole body feels the built-up textures in these all but inadvertent compositions with their once whole windows and rusty hinges. Their precarious existence is mirrored by that of the physically and visually balanced sculptures in my work, the reality of relationships, and the stability of life. The accumulation of decay is a form of growth and comfort is found in how these structures and I rest in our ability to crumble. I might be one of few to spend time considering these homes and sheds but the beauty, solace, and resonance they give me in return is ineffable. The sense of wonder, captivation, and compassion I feel when getting to know these structures echoes what I experience as I interact with, learn from, and care for people as a teacher, caregiver, friend, and fellow human.

1 A ragpicker or chiffonnier is someone who makes a living by collecting and salvaging refuse materials and scraps of cloth left in the streets. 

2 Translates to day laborer, historically a person living/working on a plantation who would carry out handyman jobs on plantation as the people living there needed, using what they had available.

3 Bricolage means a (in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things. The bricoleur is someone who uses a wide range of available things to create something. Bricoleur translates to handyman in French.