Adaline Cornell is an artist from Minneapolis, Minnesota, primarily working in ceramics. Attending Gustavus Adolphus College in the fall, she is majoring in Psychology and Studio Arts. 

In my work, I focus on the idea of union with the natural world rather than ownership and our impact on the environment.  These pieces illustrate the sometimes harrowing truth of our relationship with nature and the disturbing reality that our destructive practices affect us too. 

This piece was hand-sculpted, then carved out. This piece revisits the ancient metaphor of clay as flesh. Carved into a rib-like structure with a sternum and spine, the piece explores the idea of our bodies as vessels that are both fragile and strong; connected, like all life, to the systems around us. The flaws, formed unpredictably in the kiln, mirror the ways our bodies, too, crack and crumble; the crack in the clay mirrors the fracture of the body. Clay is both brittle and durable, just as our bodies are.