In a time where we are at once separate from and decidedly of nature, I have a deep interest in the erotics of place and its manifestations in the body. Drawn to the organic as well as the ornate, I examine our collective fascination with the natural world, the ways we distance ourselves from it, and how we cannot help but use that distance to reach back again. In my practice, this is felt most clearly in the slow processes of making by hand, particularly while working with clay. My research centers on queer ecology and the sensuality of being, as well as incorporating thinking on the power and presence of domestic, everyday objects.  

I am interested in the relationships we cultivate with the mundane (here, meant in the senses of both the everyday and that of the earth), and how those relationships can foster intimacy with the environment around us. My work engages with transformative desire – a rewilding of the self through connections to place and embracing the eroticism of being.  

With my practice rooted heavily in handmaking, my work celebrates slow, intricately crafted objects. Working predominately in clay, I enjoy creating highly detailed vessels that tease the balance between form and function. There is an intimacy that develops in the making of intricate work, and an embodied eroticism imbued into the pieces themselves. They are highly touched, and in turn invite touching. Working with clay is tactile in the supreme, and the language we use to describe the components of a vessel reflect the bodily form of it – foot, belly, neck, lip. I explore how we can cultivate a transformative relationship to our selves, tying our beings and desires to place through the objects we make and that make up our lives.  

My work explores the ways that slow acts of intricate creation can ground us in place and time. Eroticism is connection felt in and through the body – embodied experience and pleasure through making, rooted in where we are. By fostering our ties to place – time to be in nature, time to know the world around us, time to make the things that make up our lives – we connect to our bodily self, and by connecting to our bodily self, we are a part of the world and it is a part of us. My work seeks to close the distance we hold between our selves and (our) nature, encouraging an eroticism of being and connection to place that fosters intimacy, presence, and pleasure. 

Morgan Langhammer (she/her) is an artist living and working in the Cincinnati area. Born in Hamilton, OH, she first encountered clay in a high school ceramics class, where it was love at first off-center mug. In 2019, she moved out to Colorado, dedicating time to clay in earnest and joining the local community guild. By the spring of 2021, after much making, learning, and a little too much snow, Morgan moved back to Ohio and began pursuing ceramics full time, selling wares at markets and online. She is currently in her first year of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Cincinnati, and enjoying it very much.