Lenae ZIRNHELD ARTIST BIO:
Lenáe Damron Zirnheld was born April 4th 1996 in Virginia Beach, VA. In 2018, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University with a double major in Art Education and Craft and Material Studies with a concentration in metals, as well as a minor in Art History. Lenáe has exhibited at the Arrowmont School of Craft, ECU Metals Symposium, Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, VA, SNAG Exhibition in Motion and Adorned Spaces shows, and was awarded Best in Show at the 2018 SNAG Juried Student Show. Lenáe has worked as a studio assistant at Arrowmont and Penland School of Crafts, as a professional burrito roller at Chipotle, and is currently living her dream as a public school art teacher. Lenáe currently lives and works in Virginia Beach, VA making beard pins, flossing regularly, and traveling by Heelys.
SHORT ARTIST STATEMENT:
The repetition of tasks in life whether recently developed or edited and refined meticulously are comforting; I depend on routine for structure. A tool can be depended on to do a certain job, a task can be expected to yield a planned result, and the brain need not strain itself to think of the cause and effect of every motion.
From this I am obsessed with routines in my daily life, namely hygiene and learned behaviors or rituals of cleaning. We are taught to not simply need to be clean but to fall in love with the idea and feeling. In 1939 Soap ranked number two in the essentials of life and the home, only second to bread and butter,
My sophomore year in college my mental well-being plummeted. I had never felt so alone, pathetic, and crumbling. I could not admit to myself that I had a valid problem. I knew I was not okay because while I could not see the emotional toll I took on self-esteem, image, and confidence, I knew I was broken because I could never recall when I last showered. It was a striking moment of clarity. It's frightening knowing I got to a place where I was not only willing to give up most of myself but my most fundamental and basic human functions.
When I finally started digging myself out of that mental space, every small action for myself was a success. It is as if a regular act of cleaning myself is an act of resilience. I used the object of the Dentek flosser at the time to measure my recovery, now I use it as my primary medium.
