Bea Hurd (CV)

Bea Hurd is a Salt Lake City based artist who predominantly works in soft sculpture made from found and unconventional materials. They received a BFA in sculpture from the University of Utah.

Bea’s practice centers on the interconnections of sexuality, gender, and consumerism. Their work is materially based and derives its meaning from the items and materials chosen to be worked with. They take inspiration from materials of everyday life that tend to be discarded or seen as less than.

They have shown work at Finch Lane Gallery, Nox Contemporary, The Springville Museum of Fine Art, and the Bountiful Davis Art Center.

Artist Statement

Items that are connotated with junk, garbage, and trash hold within them reflections of our society. My work takes these objects and through the use of ritual, turns them - the detritus of the material world - into sacred elements. In many ways I find myself using my art as therapy; I take objects which hold uncomfortable memories and gain ownership through the ritualistic processes I take them through.

I cycle in and out of “material romances”; seeking materials to form relationships with and allowing them to persuade my reality. When I want to know about myself and my community, I look to materials that have found their way into our homes and slipped past our conscious acknowledgment. Mass-produced consumer goods emit and radiate the auras of the makers and the consumers; an unconscious reflection produced by our own endless wandering in the field of reproduction.  Products of daily use; those that are used, consumed, and disposed of read like newspapers about who brings such materials into and out of existence so quickly. These expeditions come across as both baptisms and anthropological revelations in real time.

When searching for explorations, I probe supermarkets and gas stations, thrift stores, and my kitchen, pining for materials that want to be understood differently. I know that a material intriguing enough to enchant me for months possesses within it a body of work and a new perspective of myself. As if it were the tango, a push and pull between my needs and that of the material is established. Products that touch, help, and integrate with our bodies create intimate acts yielding the potential to shape how we think. Ultimately, I gravitate towards materials that go into, are used in relation to, or in replacement of the body and are an act of narcissistic consumption. Knowing the act of consumption is abundantly personal and self-motivated, I turn to my own experiences for insight.

As consumption overtly relates the body, when I wear, consume, or can envision my work in relation to my body, the meaning is able to manifest.  It has become integral to not only comment on but place myself in the consumption my work focuses on. I choose to digest my material environment and allow for shameless outward expression.  Hand-stitching, preserving, and yielding useless have become time-consuming acts which provide me moments of self-reflection and empowerment. The processes I impose onto myself to create my work is of equal importance as the finished product. When I begin a piece, I do not sketch or make a vision of results. Instead, through laborious, often redundant, and many times humorous tasks, I invite the material to teach me and direct my moves. As my material understanding deepens, the creation of a body of work follows. And as with all relationships which contain a beginning, middle, and end, once I feel that I have received what the material wishes to tell me, I move on to the next romance.