Power is a ceramic side table completed in 2024. From a series of sketches, the form grew into a robust rounded body with skinny, drippy boobie legs to hold it up. The piece was conceived from previous works including a piece title “All That We Carry” that showed in 2023 in the Lebel Gallery. 

 

The texture, consisting of individual pin tool marks, each slashing at the clay, but en masse, create a pillowy soft experience. These marks have become a signature of Stacey’s work. 

 

Following the start of the Me Too movement, her worked changed, became highly feminist, poignant with tension and turmoil. As the movement sunk in, it allowed her to understand her own experiences and what she had built walls in her mind to contain. 

 

At face value, the artwork could be described as quaint or unassuming, often being called “cute” at an initial glance. Proving the point, that even some women prefer a veil than to confront the reality they live amongst. 

 

The piece draws upon Stacey’s own experiences and the sexism and harm every woman identifying person experiences, daily, including being called “cute”.

 

Each little mark embodies the harm experienced. Some large and fast; actions that cause women to move differently in the world. Acts that can create a lifetime of trauma, and those that are micro, barely there, but that still cut at a woman’s confidence, one small word, or gesture at a time. 

 

All the little digs at a woman’s personhood, her societal inferiority that show up in the everyday life. Each mark in the clay, a recognition of “I see you” from Stacey to each viewer. 

 

Collectively and individually we hold power and deserve to experience what it is like to feel it in our bodies, despite a lifetime of cuts.