WELLY FLETCHER

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For the past many years, my work has been addressing our particularly (and spectacularly) human lack of intelligence by turning toward animal and material bodies that know better. As a species obsessed with thinking and vision, here in 2025 we've lost contact with our body-based intelligence, and with that, our interconnectedness with earth and our co-species. I would argue, also some of the best – and most hopeful – parts of ourselves. 

For this reason, I'm drawn to prehistoric artworks (40,000-15,000 years ago), all obsessed with depictions of co-species: lions, bison, mammoth, deer, horses, even fish. I think this divorcing of our mind from body began back then and has continued to disintegrate. I posit that maybe we began to put these drawings and sculptures outside of ourselves (language/art/religion/science), at that time to reconnect with that powerful intellect within ourselves. Is it possible to do so?  Can we draw closer if we learn to listen better? Can humanity evolve, again? And within this, can the material impact of sculpture carve an opportunity for an embodied, intersectional, even poetic experience of otherness?

Crafted using raw materials such as felt, wood, clay, and metal, my artworks offer a direct, physical encounter. And as material impact is at the heart of my research and creative work, my artworks are materially-rich. Recent sculptures such as “Waves of Time,” directly reference forms within a group of small exquisite prehistoric (35,000 yo) sculptures found in Vogelherd Cave. Other works such as "Canine Comadre," pay tribute to my direct learning from my pup and closest companion.

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Welly Fletcher is an artist and educator, and is currently a faculty member in the Sculpture & Expanded Practice Area in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico.