Babette Wainwright

medium: ceramics
wisconsin arts board artist fellowship award winner, 2002

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Zin 1999 Ceramics	Altarpiece (Gran Bwa) 2002 Ceramics	Sa M'we M'paka Pale 1999 Ceramics
Tradition 2000 Ceramics	Simbi 1999 Ceramics	Rainbow over the Mountain 2000 Ceramics
Ascension 2002 Ceramics	Ban m'ba w'ren 1999 Ceramics	Low Tides not dated Ceramics
Possession 2000 Ceramics

Contact information
Artist resides in: Madison, WI
Email Address: babuart2@aol.com

Artist statement
My approach to art is rooted in my cultural past. I use forms that define beauty in terms of who I am, a woman of the African diaspora. I want my sculpture to speak of "transformation," both spiritual and cultural. Unlike the flat storytelling nature of my paintings, the malleability of clay allows me to give physical dimensions to my deepest thoughts and emotions. The pit fired clay is a link to humanity's common past. It is a language which is both personal and universal. In order to stimulate this "language," I burnish each piece with a stone. This encourages the dance of smoke on the surface, creating works with distinctive markings.

Biography
Babette Wainwright was born and raised in Haiti. She emigrated to the US in the mid- 60's. She taught herself to paint at an early age, while helping her photographer father colorize photos. She participated in her first exhibition at the age of 19, at the Centre d'Art d'Haiti. She is a psychotherapist who recently earned a MFA degree in ceramics at the UW-Madison.

In addition to her sculpture, Wainwright is a recognized oil painter and a published writer whose theme is centered on issues of social uprootedness. Her work appears in various newspapers and anthologies, including Dane County's "The Glacier Stopped Here."

In the past 15 years, she was awarded two Individual Artist Grants by the Wisconsin Arts Board. In 2001, she was selected for the NCECA Clay National Exhibition in South Carolina. Her sculpture won a Clay Times Award of Merit and is now part of Winthrop University Collection. She exhibits extensively, both locally and nationally. her work is widely collected. She is presently the recipient of a 2002 Wisconsin Arts Board fellowship.