Cicak's work has always focused on natural settings. Growing up against a stretch of forest in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, she was taught at a young age the intricacies that exist between humans and the environments we share. In 2016, she received her Bachelors of Art from Dickinson College where she studied Art Practices and Classical Studies. Because of this, she often uses mythology to express her thoughts on nature, memory, and the connection between past and present, personal and public. This spring, she will receive her Masters in Fine Arts in Ceramics at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Walk softly and look closely for there are many secrets to discover. Joelle Cicak’s work focuses on the tensions, the contradictions, the rarities, and the tenderness that occur within the spaces we share with nature. A process based artist, she uses the materials she feels will best meet the needs of the ideas she is addressing, and uses process to meditate over the relationship she has with the subject matter. Her work evokes ethereal spaces, memories, and the intimate relationships we forge with the environments we inhabit and the animals we exist alongside. For her thesis, she took the opportunity to focus on her relationship with her childhood backyard as a personal exploration into her own foundational experiences with nature. She hopes her work will encourage others to contemplate longer the environments that we cohabit and the way they shape us as we shape them.
"Reconstructing the Sacred Grove," 2020 Ceramic, wood
