ISABELLA KISER Rice Box -1 (2024)

ISABELLA KISER
Rice Box -1 (2024)
Photography: Fiber and performance
24” x 16”
$250

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Inspired by the rice dispenser that lived in her maternal grandparents’ home, “Rice Box”, is a remembrance of Lola and Lolo, who gave so much and asked for so little in return. When she was a child, Kiser, and her brothers were fascinated by their grandparent’s rice box – pulling one of three levers to release rice into a lime green bucket, listening to the sound of the grains falling back onto themselves and then onto the hard plastic of the top compartment as they refilled the dispenser. A blissful loop. This piece is a scaled-up version of the original object, made soft, wearable, and interactive with upholstery foam, recycled fabric, and rice. “Rice Box” is the next iteration of Kiser’s “Mobile Home Series,” an ongoing project that reimagines childhood memories and the boxes in her life.  

ARTIST BIO:

Bella Kiser is an interdisciplinary mixed-race Filipino American artist from Chicago, IL currently based in Detroit, MI. She uses fibers, sculpture, performance, virtual reality, and sound to build her world of Soft Architecture. Her work explores topics such as identity, memory, otherness, and home. Kiser is a graduate of Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Combined Degree Program where she received a BFA in Studio Art and BS in Environmental Studies.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

“Expectations” reflects my recollections of coming to the United States. I arrived here in 1976 as a teenager. It was an exciting yet daunting time since we had no family nearby. I had many expectations for myself as well as having to deal with what others expected of me. Oftentimes we have a way of pigeonholing people based on who they are, where they come from, and what they look like. “Expectations” is one of those instances.

ARTIST BIO:

Viola C. Mayol, a mixed media artist, was born in Tacloban City, Leyte and immigrated to Chicago in 1976. Viola graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Speech Communications from North Park University and later pursued a Master of Arts in Counseling: Art Therapy from Adler University. She is a certified facilitator of the Open Studio Process. Viola has made art all her life, following in the footsteps of her maternal family. She is inspired by nature, by the many places in the world she visited, by the stories that people shared, and her memories of the Philippines.