Sophia Weiss (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist that finished her undergraduate studies at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2019. In her senior year of university, she was the recipient of the Louis Mendez ‘52 Award for her professional development. Her work focuses on the interaction of handmade spaces with physical or artificial evidence of the figure. She closely examines the figure to represent her own insecurities by fabricating spaces for fragments of distinct body parts or the residue that the body produces. The disembodiment allows her to isolate her focus on the shape that the extremity possesses which permits her to utilize it as an accessory to the construction of the composition. The tactile nature of creating, cutting, and arranging the composition is an important and therapeutic factor for Sophia to be engaged with.
During her time at university, photography was her main concentration, but had the chance to expand her knowledge by experimenting with other ways of making like ceramics and printmaking. The nature of theses mediums fueled her obsessive need for repetition and a tangible experience in creating. Within this work, she no longer used the body in imagery, but rather used her own body in the labor of prints and tile sculptures. Sophia was also forced to think more critically about her time and the final formation of ideas in these mediums because of the initial long process that ceramics and printmaking has. In doing so she thought more on the forms and shapes that were being made which in return, aided her photographic work compositionally. She received the Peters Valley School of Craft Summer Scholarship Award from the Division of Ceramics for her ceramic work.
Sophia is currently living in Queens, New York and expanding here artistic insight working as studio assistants to various artists in Brooklyn.
Feel free to send me an email • sophiauweiss@gmail.com
Instagram • @u_wise