Debo Groover

Raised in Savannah, Georgia, I have lived mostly in the South. I received an MFA from the University of Georgia in ceramics and have spent half of my art years as a potter. Although I am formally trained in ceramics, I am totally self-taught in polymer clay.

In both a fortuitous and naive exploration of this new material, I applied every technique I had learned in ceramics and subsequently broke every rule in polymer clay. This resulted in a brand new technique of using colorful and patterned sheets of clay like fabric collage. The clay itself is paper thin and tactile. When you look at each painting, the subject matter is clay. The background is textured acrylic paint. I try to use the paint in such a way that the viewer has to closely engage with the work in order to distinguish between the two materials.

My work is made in a place of happiness. This has always been my most accurate truth. The inspiration is very simple. I use animals to tell the stories of both ordinary and special human events from Sunday dinner to Mardi Gras and everything in between. Sometimes, a bird is more than a bird.