Interview
Madeline Coven
J.S: Where did you grow up? Do you find that this influences your work?
M.C: I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a place that is deeply intertwined with its landscape. The city sits in a valley between the Sandia Mountains and a stretch of dormant volcanoes, with the Rio Grande running through its center. I was always aware of the vastness of the desert, of how the city doesn’t dominate the land but settles into it. It’s a place that wears its history openly. You can read time in the layers of rock and the shifting patterns of the river.
Growing up there made me think about how the earth preserves its own history, how it records change through natural processes of erosion, pressure, and evolution. A central part of my education when I was young was the study of local ecosystems and how they break down and regenerate. That framework has shaped how I see materials, as in flux and part of a broader cycle that relies on all of its parts. I aim to have a similar sensibility in my work, not to impose form upon objects and material, but to observe and collaborate with its natural behavior.
New Mexico holds complex histories; political, economic, and colonial. It’s long been used as a testing ground, both literally and metaphorically. That sense of charged landscape, one that holds memory and contradiction, has informed how I approach making. It taught me how beauty and violence can coexist, how something can be altered, scarred, and renewed, but continues to hold evidence of that impact. Creation and destruction often happen simultaneously, and I hope to show that sense of disruption in my work.
J.S: You often work with casting and molds. What is it about this process that speaks to your interests as an artist?
M.C: I utilize mold making and casting both as a tool and as conceptual exploration. I see the alchemical nature of the casting process as a simultaneous degradation and rebirth of the original object. The goal is not to copy, but to evolve. I love the translation that happens in casting, the transformation that becomes a record, but one that is subtly distorted.
This interest has developed into the study of endocasts, the internal positive of a hollow object, naturally occurring most commonly in the fossilization of the cranial vault and mollusc shells. The cavity slowly fills with sediment as the exterior degrades. My representation of this process began through casting pewter into cuttlefish bone carvings, recreating the erosion of the skeleton and to call to the earliest known cranial endocast from the Holocephalan, an ancient fish. This process was used to make the Worry Stone Pulls in this collection. I carve the mold knowing it will erode slightly each time it’s used. The research and representation of endocasts in my work looks at casting as a memory of something captured by chance. Making the void of a mold tangible interests me as a record of its wearing away.
J.S: On that note, how does the notion of memory factor into your work?
M.C: I think of memory as something that’s embedded physically in materials I use through their evidence of time and impact, like wood that has split, marks from a mold, creases in the hide. Many of my pieces, like the Crater Sconces and the Troposphere Pours, carry these traces of process; the cooling rings in the metal, or the impression left behind by the burlap. Those marks feel like a kind of documentation, where the process becomes part of the object’s identity.
In my own collection of objects or when I look for references, I’m drawn to things that bear the marks of their own history like worn edges, small repairs, and traces of touch. In my work, I try to translate this feeling of memory through using composition as record keeping. Assembly and form are approached like mapping, giving intuitive instruction on hand placement and use, or as a sketch of my own abstract map of the concepts behind the work.
J.S: Is the functionality of your work important to you or irrelevant?
M.C: Coming from a sculpture background, function feels like an addition to the work rather than the foundation. I arrived at making functional objects as an evolution of my sculptural practice and as a means to relieve myself of the limitations of space. When I felt creative blocks or couldn’t justify following through on ideas that would sit in my small NYC studio, making something for my apartment broke that open. Then I became more familiar with furniture and sculptural crossover through working for designer Minjae Kim.
I recently heard someone describe a chair as a “sculpture of a chair,” rather than a “sculptural chair.” This feels like a good way to describe functionality in the work. It's important to me that the work is approachable and works well, while also using that as a conceptual framework to jump off from. I like that it belongs to the language of the everyday. The way it's activated by its utility brings the body into the work and creates that sense of intimacy I look for.
J.S: What is your favorite material to work with? Which material do you find most challenging? Rewarding?
M.C: The past couple years I’ve been working with a lot of pewter, the consistent variable throughout this collection. I came to it because of its accessibility, only needing a very simple set up in my studio to work with it. That accessibility allows for more experimentation and unexpected results, which is how most of my work develops. It melts at a low temperature, so I can manipulate it while it's cooling and test how it will react to different materials, which wouldn’t be as safe with metals that melt at higher temperatures. When I’d like to work quickly and impulsively, materials like pewter and resins are fairly forgiving, allowing for reshaping, melting back down or extending onto work.
Working with wood can be less forgiving and requires more patience and planning, which is a challenge, but being forced to slow down usually results in some of the most rewarding work. I have been working with clay the longest, but I think it can be the most challenging and least forgiving. Its process of drying into its most fragile state before it’s fired gambles with a long list of things that can go wrong, but is good practice of acceptance when something shatters or cracks at the very end.
J.S: Materiality and handwork plays a significant role in your work. How does the notion of "craft" come into play?
M.C: I see craft as an exchange of knowledge, something inherited and communally driven instead of isolated. For me, craft is about tactility and using what I’ve learned or inherited as a foundation for experimentation. I’ve worked for many other artists, designers, and fabricators. The prompt of trying to inhabit someone's mindset or recreate their gesture has helped develop my hand and contributed to understanding how central problem solving is to any practice. In many ways, making other people's work mirrors the model of craft practices, learning how someone's unique handwork language can be both communal and very personal.
J.S: I love your "Worry Stones". Can you expand upon your inspiration and ideas behind them?
M.C: I wanted to translate that gesture of comfort and familiarity into a functional object, something you’d touch every day mindlessly, but that carries the history of those gestures. The worry stone offers a sense of calm and regulation through a simple movement, even secretly in a pocket. It's a very subtle self-soothing ritual that feels both like prayer and compulsion.
The sense of superstition it holds relates to other symbolic objects of protection I have been thinking about; the evil eye, prayer beads, horseshoes, and religious imagery. I’m also interested in statue rubbing traditions, touching parts to public monuments for wish making and good luck, and how that impulse towards touch becomes a visible collective gesture. On a smaller scale, these drawer pulls aim to reflect back this devotional impulse. I like the idea of bridging the grandiosity of these acts in the public sphere and the weight of private faith based ritual objects, and putting them into the devotional acts of something mundane.
J.S: You mentioned Georgian era influences in your work. How has historical furniture and object making influenced your practice?
M.C: My interest in historical furniture and objects lies in what it reveals about the cultural moment it was born out of. Some of our greatest records are through craft practices, from ancient times to now. The details of construction and ornament reveal what was valued more broadly at the time, and shifts in style show a response or adjustment to the issues of the previous era. In this collection, I reference the Georgian era as it was a shift towards restraint and refinement after the excess of the Baroque period. In the Georgian Set, I use similar materials and ideas of that time with mahogany, inlay, and prioritize symmetry. I focused on ergonomics and utility in these handles, with a natural grip for the hand and thumb, but wanted to nod to that decorative heritage.
In my practice, what I draw from historical pieces has to do with the intimacy of them. Moments that show the hand of the maker and the community it came from connect to something very personal, even if from a long time ago or very far away. I hope to translate this in my work, that what I make tells something personal about my response to my education and influences.
J.S: How do concepts of ritual or ceremony play into your work? Do you practice any of your own rituals?
M.C: I think of developing any skill as ritualistic. To learn a material deeply is to grow comfortable with it, to understand its behavior, its limits, and its possibilities. The skills I use come from a long lineage, processes that have been practiced and mastered countless times before me. What interests me is not mastery, but the act of developing my own ritual through making even if it's not always the traditional way, as long as that alternative or selective use is informed and still has integrity.
I’m also interested in how objects can become ritualistic through repeated use and the meaning we assign to them. Pulling from existing objects, both utilitarian and decorative, tools that have been developed for many centuries, I interpret how they can be reimagined. For me, that’s where ceremony happens, in the relationships I form with the things I use every day. In my own studio, those ideas translate into process. Repetitive handwork, full days of sanding, and maintaining the workspace feel like rituals. They ground the work and remind me that making itself can be a form of ceremony and caretaking.
J.S: The "Sanctuary Lamp" references a religious setting, but you mention that it can also represent ideas of remembrance and devotion in a secular sense. How does spirituality come into play for you as an artist?
M.C: My interest in spirituality is in what connects us beyond the physical. A sanctuary lamp represents an eternal light, something that is always present. This veil of protection could be approached from a religious or a secular perspective, depending on what metaphysical presence holds value, like being watched over by a god, those that have passed, or simply a reminder of values. The way this object is imbued with the idea of a presence shows the power something inanimate can hold. Object making has always been linked to spirituality, with so many historical relics and art objects being religious interpretations or to honor the divine. While my work is not in reverence to a religious figure, I consider how making anything can be a memorial and its meaning and value is constantly in flux. Putting so much attention into constructing something requires some kind of faith.
