Suspended at the UMLAUF: Totems

September 3, 2025 - January 4, 2026

Suspended at the UMLAUF is an exhibition series featuring select artists' sculptural works suspended from the ceiling of our octagonal Roberta Crenshaw Building. We are honored to feature Terra Goolsby as our fall 2025 artist, showcasing her recent ceramic and fabric sculptures, Totems.

While at the Rhode Island School of Design, homesickness led Goolsby to an unexpected discovery: the Mesoamerican mythology her mother had shared as a child became a bridge back to her heritage. She filled her time with research on Mesoamerican myth in search of that familiar warmth. When a family member received a genetic diagnosis, this exploration of inherited stories expanded into questions about other forms of inheritance-examining how patterns, both behavioral and biological, travel through generations. Totems presents five eight-foot ceramic and fabric sculptures that merge personal history with ancient iconography. Goolsby draws directly from Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of the dead, creating ceramic forms that mimic Mictecacihuätt's skeletal body illustrated across Mesoamerican ceramics and codices.

The choice of ceramic isn't accidental. Like the ancient vessels that depicted Mictecacihuätl, these clay forms serve as repositories for memory and meaning. Each section has its own texture-carved marks, scored lines, impressed patterns, fingerprint indentations-creating a tactile record of past generations. Woven throughout are fibers from Goolsby's family clothing, transforming these sculptures into hybrid objects that are part artwork, part family archive.
 

Just as Mesoamerican craftsmen and cultures used ceramic forms to connect past and present, Goolsby's Totems function as contemporary vessels for intergenerational dialogue, where ancient clay traditions meet
modern family stories.