CHARLOTTE RICHARDSON-DEPPE
Bio
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe is a queer feminist artist working between performance and soft sculpture. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches as a lecturer in the Department of Art. In Fall 2023 she will be the Bresler Resident Artist at VisArts and the Montgomery College Artist-in-Residence in Rockville, MD.
Charlotte grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she performed in musical theater and opera as well as training in aerial arts at Circus Juventas. Her artistic focus expanded towards studio art while studying at Grinnell College, where she became enamored with sculpture and installation while continuing to train in dance, theater, and vocal music. At the University of Maryland, she turned toward soft sculpture and performance, collaborating with peers across the disciplines of dance, music, photography, and film.
Some of Charlotte’s artistic highlights include performing with the Riverbed Theater Company at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan; teaching weaving and fiber arts at Weaving Hand Studio in Brooklyn, NY; serving as program Assistant Director at Urban Arts Academy in Minneapolis, MN; and receiving the Jim Henson Award for Puppetry at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Artist Statement
As a queer feminist artist working between soft sculpture and performance, my works mingle bodies and bodily sculptures.
Growing up, I performed aerial arts in a circus, where a web of interdependence keeps you off the ground.
In my own body now, I feel the residual stretch, tension, and ache the circus left in me—remnants of bodies defying gravity by holding one another up.
I exaggerate bodies and replicate limbs, making visible the ways humans connect and relate to one another.