Mariko Bolton

Mariko Bolton (They/Them/Theirs)
Studio Art major

I think we all have ghosts, whether or not we believe in life after death. A ghost can be the hollow where someone once was, or a memory twisted by time. Through clay, I give form to the ghosts in my life —some gone and others disappeared, all unreachable and yet unshakeable. I’m interested in using horses as a motif to communicate this; I have always been fixated by these strange, magical creatures. They appear in fairy tales from my childhood and grace the edges of my dreams, and are almost otherworldly in the way they move, their delicate legs holding up their impossibly heavy bodies.

In this piece, porcelain horses hang from a bed by red strings of fate — said in Japanese folklore to tie you to people you are destined to meet — and shift in and out of view to form the shadowy silhouettes of people, reflecting the elusive nature of the things that live only in our memories.