Ava Bock

Living in the urban jungles of Kings County, New York, I was exposed to a bevy of visual and textural influences without understanding their inherent differences. This normalized and unified my understanding of myself and my environment as part of a whole working together. This experience of new and old, life and death, history and progress contributed to forming this cyclical yet constantly evolving expression of life that has become the basis of the circle, the symbol I use to express life in my art.

The only deviation from my understanding of the circle of life was the recognition that every iteration of life exists within structures, both man-made and biological. This required a different kind of symbol. These spaces had more structure and strength but were also limited in their ability to hold life. This idea inevitably leads me to the second form I use in my art, a square.

Over time, this binary language became the basis for translating the figments of the mind and my understanding of them into physical form. To create these forms, I went back to all those materials I lived amongst growing up in New York City, North Carolina, and beyond. I wanted to work with a material that was both man-made and biological, that could be transparent and opaque, and that existed as both a liquid and a solid. That search is how I found the bioresin plastic materials in my works today.

I use epoxies, urethanes, acrylics, and recycled polyester in layers to translate those evolving constructs of life and space together in real time. Using mindfulness and meditation techniques, I stay focused and grounded in a calm space as I immerse myself in the thoughts, feelings, and moments I am reconstructing through art. Each time I assemble the many pieces and pathways of perception from the recesses of my mind, I open a corridor to understanding and acceptance that did not exist before. The journey this passage takes is then experienced in a singular moment when the final artwork is viewed. Each painting, drawing, photograph, and sculpture becomes a fused moment of life and space, seen and unseen, interwoven with materials that exemplify my very constructed yet humanly curated experience.