Sam Staas
Born 1998 in Tempe Arizona, multimedia artist Sam Staas works in a variety of materials. His research focuses on ceramic sculpture, hand paper-making, book arts, and other crafts and fine arts. Staas is currently living in Easthampton, Massachusetts after receiving a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Arizona State University. Staas creates work that represents tokens of identity and nostalgia through motifs of flora and fauna.
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Statement
My studio practice uses ceramic materials to explore ideas of nostalgia as related to specific memories of a childhood spent visiting nature. As a child, my family embarked on long road trips from the Arizona desert to the wildly different environment of Lake Wantastiquet in Vermont. On the lake, my Dad and Grandad taught me to fly fish. Grandad taught me to make my own flies to mock the bugs the trout would eat to lure them in. Dad taught me how to handle the fish properly when releasing them so as to not hurt their slime coating. We spent other days with my Grandma, walking around the lake collecting tree litter, mushrooms, and other organic materials to create what we named Dish Gardens. While on these walks, little holes in trees and rocks would call for us to build fairy houses for the creatures we believed inhabited the forest when humans weren’t around. The luna moths that dotted the forest at night became nocturnal fairies; the salamanders were wood spirits living under the mushrooms on the forest floor. These memories hold their magic in my mind even now, some ten years later.
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The temporality of these recollections and the nostalgia that accompanies them impacts the concepts and imagery I use within my work. The word “nostalgia” perfectly describes the yearning for the childlike joy and freedom I felt while living amongst nature in Vermont. Translated from Greek, nostos means home, and algos describes the pain that accompanies the thought. My nostos is the connection to, and the enrichment of, biodiversity. My algos is the pain I feel while trapped in the desert with no reprieve other than clay. Clay carries a particular importance in my practice, as ceramic materials come from the ground, connecting me to the earth and all its inhabitants. I create pieces using the images of trout and luna moths because of their strong symbolism. The minuscule lifespan of the luna moth mimics the temporality of memory; schools of trout embody an accepting community, which I connect back to my family’s acceptance of my identity as a transgender man. I sculpt my memories into physical objects in an effort of preservation. Just like the lifecycle of a luna moth, these memories are forever and yet the experiences are temporary.
