a multimedia artist.

She works mainly in ceramics, fiber, and paint, though she also utilizes paper-based material often. Through exploration of her personal narrative, she aims to create candid work suited for self-discovery in both the artist and empathetic viewers. Sylvia puts her extremely detail-oriented style of working to use by carefully building self-contained moments that work together as larger compositions. Most of her pieces are materially driven; they are informed by the unique connotations of certain media as well as her relationship with the materials as she handles them in the making process. Clay and fibers, for instance, both hold intimate associations with our sense of touch. Their long craft history as traditional materials for functional objects make us accustomed to handling them; it is almost second nature. Day to day, we eat and drink from cups and dishes; we drape ourselves in fabric. We know the texture, the weight. Their causal relationships with our bodies are familiar. The relationship to the hand of the maker is even more intimate; the finished product is a physical record of the collaboration between the material and the artist. Fired clay acts as a fossil of every point of contact with the maker while the repeating stitches of a knitted fabric mark the time spent creating it in visual increments. Sylvia aims to speak through her pieces by learning the language of each of the materials she works with, relying specifically on the bodily nature of analogue craft techniques.