Stacy Jo Scott: Writ on Water
Devening Projects is pleased to present Stacy Jo Scott鈥檚 first solo exhibition at the gallery and first in Chicago. Writ in Water features a ceramics project that utilizes advanced systems to bring ancient production together with digital technology. Writ in Water opens on Sunday, March 30 and continues until May 10, 2025.
In her statement for the exhibition, Stacy Jo says 鈥淭hese works are drawings etched into dry clay or dragged through wet colored slip using a CNC router and stylus. The underlying framework for the drawings emerges from programming scripts based on descriptions of imperial Roman architecture, which were developed with AI-generated code. I alter, layer, overlap, and amend these simplified interpretations to create imagery that seems at once ancient and speculative, evoking a future yet to come.
While digital processes operate in a seemingly timeless realm of perfect repeatability, clay connects to geological time鈥攆ormed over millennia and bearing the capacity to endure long after our digital systems have become obsolete. 鈥淲rit in water鈥濃�攖his phrase, etched into Keats鈥檚 grave marker, captures the central tension in these works.
There鈥檚 an intentional irony in using AI to interpret symbols of imperial power, while that same technology increasingly functions as a form of concentrated authority in our digital lives. The clay tablets physically manifest this contradiction: they preserve AI鈥檚 idealized forms while simultaneously transforming them through material processes beyond algorithmic control. Just as ancient empires left behind ruins despite their claims to eternal authority, these tablets suggest that our contemporary systems of technological power鈥攄espite their apparent invincibility and efficiency鈥攔emain subject to realities they cannot transcend.
As the bit follows its programmed path, the clay responds with its own material resistance鈥攃rumbling and chipping along the precise lines. Though newly created, the etched forms immediately appear weathered, as if excavated from an archaeological site. This visual transformation creates objects that exist in multiple temporal states鈥攂rand new yet ancient-looking鈥攅mbodying both the precision of technological control and the inevitable processes of erosion that await even our most sophisticated systems.鈥�
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Devening Projects is pleased to present Stacy Jo Scott鈥檚 first solo exhibition at the gallery and first in Chicago. Writ in Water features a ceramics project that utilizes advanced systems to bring ancient production together with digital technology. Writ in Water opens on Sunday, March 30 and continues until May 10, 2025.
In her statement for the exhibition, Stacy Jo says 鈥淭hese works are drawings etched into dry clay or dragged through wet colored slip using a CNC router and stylus. The underlying framework for the drawings emerges from programming scripts based on descriptions of imperial Roman architecture, which were developed with AI-generated code. I alter, layer, overlap, and amend these simplified interpretations to create imagery that seems at once ancient and speculative, evoking a future yet to come.
While digital processes operate in a seemingly timeless realm of perfect repeatability, clay connects to geological time鈥攆ormed over millennia and bearing the capacity to endure long after our digital systems have become obsolete. 鈥淲rit in water鈥濃�攖his phrase, etched into Keats鈥檚 grave marker, captures the central tension in these works.
There鈥檚 an intentional irony in using AI to interpret symbols of imperial power, while that same technology increasingly functions as a form of concentrated authority in our digital lives. The clay tablets physically manifest this contradiction: they preserve AI鈥檚 idealized forms while simultaneously transforming them through material processes beyond algorithmic control. Just as ancient empires left behind ruins despite their claims to eternal authority, these tablets suggest that our contemporary systems of technological power鈥攄espite their apparent invincibility and efficiency鈥攔emain subject to realities they cannot transcend.
As the bit follows its programmed path, the clay responds with its own material resistance鈥攃rumbling and chipping along the precise lines. Though newly created, the etched forms immediately appear weathered, as if excavated from an archaeological site. This visual transformation creates objects that exist in multiple temporal states鈥攂rand new yet ancient-looking鈥攅mbodying both the precision of technological control and the inevitable processes of erosion that await even our most sophisticated systems.鈥�
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