Kelli Damron is a sculptor who earned her BFA in ceramics at the Northwest Missouri State University of Maryville in 1995, and her MFA in the same field at the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2001. Her work has been extensively exhibited in both public and private galleries, especially in upstate New York, and it has entered several collections.
In an artist’s statement, Damron writes:
“I choose to work with the voluptuous female figure. I am completely captivated by the way the rolls of the body move and stack upon each other. … Recent American pop culture has played a major role in portraying the voluptuous female as unhealthy and unattractive; it has recreated an idea of beauty that is an extreme opposite of the ideals of the past. Through my ceramic sculpture I would like to propose an alternative to the emaciated female figure that is constructed by society today. … Through figurative clay sculpture, I hope to re-establish a link to historical ideals of what is considered beautiful. I want to create a view and ideal of beauty that is completely my own. I use amply proportioned female forms to reflect the sublime power of my own body, while defining my personal ideal feminine beauty.”