turning the corner
May 28 – July 23, 2022
Works by Natalie Moffitt & Kara Zuzu
Touchstone Center for Crafts
1049 Wharton Furnace RD
Farmington, PA 15437
Touchstone currently requires facemasks be worn in all indoor spaces on campus.
Gallery Hours: Thursday - Sunday 10:00am-4:00pm.
What does “turning the corner” mean to you?
The opportunity to do this show came up right in the middle of a big transitional period in my life. Right before I was approached about the show, I finished a month’s work of deep cleaning my apartment from top to bottom and expanding my home studio. I would not have had the space to make the work I wanted to make for this show before this expansion was finished. The show will open a few days before my last day at my job and my first day as a full-time artist, something I have been planning for and taking active steps towards for months, and dreaming about for years.
I have a tendency to live my life in chapters, with clear endings and beginnings. Usually these chapters have been tied to a change in locations, and none have lasted longer than four years in a row for me before. I’m currently in my fourth year living in Pittsburgh, with no plans or inclination to end this chapter yet. I don’t know what happens in the fifth year in a row of living in a place, and I don’t know what will happen as I make this attempt at painting full time. I am about to find out, and it is both exciting and frightening.
I’ve been anticipating turning this corner for years, but I am finally in a place where I feel like I can approach it with more curiosity than fear.
-Natalie Moffitt
No one can truly predict or plan for what comes next. We can attempt to prepare ourselves, to take necessary precautions, yet the wheel of fortune of which is life will continue to spin, and we must find the resolve that it is out of our control. There is an uncanny ability of an artist to pivot when life is happening at them. It is in our nature to respond to and reflect back on our life experiences through our artistic practice. “Turning the Corner” is a celebration of where we have come from and a toast of things to come. Exposing ourselves intimately to the viewers, sharing our responses to our experiences in life, and yet building confidence and momentum in anticipating the future with the excitement of what is to come. We have our art, We have our practice, and with that, we navigate our lives.
Turning the corner is an exhibition of where I was, and where I am going.
-Kara Zuzu
About the artists
Kara "Zuzu" Zupancic received her BA in Studio Art and Art Education from Saint Vincent College in 2007. She continued her education at Edinboro University and earned her MA in Art Education in 2012. She maintained a professional career as an arts educator while pursuing her work as a professional artist.
As a Pittsburgh-based ceramic sculpture artist, Zuzu makes both smaller, functional art (like mugs with hand-sculpted embellishment) as well as large sculptures. Her one-of-a-kind sculptures are inspired by animals, women, and narratives from her lived experiences. To further deepen her skills, Zuzu attends workshops held by a variety of independent studio artists. She also traveled to Bali, Indonesia to complete a workshop with artist Allesandro Gallo. Most recently, Kara completed an artist residency at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. She connects with other sculptors through her membership in the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors and Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.
Especially an animal lover, the creatures Zuzu chooses to sculpt are often those that cross her path and leave her imprinted with a feeling evoked by that animal. Intentionally chosen, Zuzu relies on the calming energy of animals to tell humanistic and personal stories. Her sculptures draw you in, asking you to look beyond an initial impression for interpretation. Animals are a non-threatening way to engage an audience in an experience of allowing for multiple perspectives and self-reflection.
Image: Kara Zuzu
Image: Natalie Moffitt
Natalie Moffitt is an artist living and working out of her home studio in Pittsburgh. She is an abstract oil painter who uses color as a tool to create intuitive, emotional paintings. Her work draws from a specific, deeply personal, and ever-growing vocabulary of colors, lines, and methods of mark making that she has been compiling over the past ten years of her practice. She considers her paintings visual streams of consciousness that are heavily influenced by her surroundings, as well as by her day to day emotions, experiences, and memories.