Nonverbal Communications Studies

Lily Stennis-Vinson recent ceramic sculptural work is based on her daily observation of human communication through body language. These slender or chunky figures are abstractly formed by the weight pull of the clay which make unique convex or concave features to compliment the form. The piercing of the clay is significant to the absence of gesture without signage or language. The figures are replications of communication between two people and at the same time can interact with the audience.
What inspired her to create this body of work was her interest of people watching and paying attention to the small details of reading body language and gesture without signage or language. Her goal is to bring awareness to the psychology of understanding, and the impact of human nature and nonverbal communication. This ultimately creates connections between the viewer and the art object. The oddness of the form invites the viewer to then be a part of the conversation when being gazed upon or unacknowledged. The distance, height, and negative space play a role of how one may exemplify proxemics. Paralinguistic is the reason She create on a larger scale, “It’s not what you say, but it’s how you say it”, which is another factor of nonverbal communication. The sculptures scale and color are a metaphor for the voice of her work. These personified figures are black and white because they’re to be symbolic to the absence of noise, so the audience is to only focus on the figures body language. The pedestals contradict her work to the fact of nonverbal communication is not heard or to be loud which my work opposes to be. She placed the figures on these loud rough textured wooden crate pedestals to adopt purpose of a soapbox; A soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject.