Silence Made Tangible
A dense circular form sends delicate lines outward, while a long curve opens into a pale, spacious field. In Irina Howard’s Soul Journey – Where Silence Traces the Unseen, the eye follows a movement that feels at once intimate and expansive. The sculpture gives a quiet presence to things we sense before we can put them into words.
Born in Ukraine and based in New York City, Irina is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and educator who founded Visual Philosophy. Her practice draws on existential inquiry, cognitive psychology, and art therapy, exploring human experience through sculpture, oil painting, and installation. Organic abstraction, monochromatic palettes, and layered surfaces give those inquiries a physical form.
Fragility with a Living Structure
Created in 2026 with wire mesh, papier-mâché, sculpting compound, wires, and fabric, Soul Journey – Where Silence Traces the Unseen extends across an open composition. Its concentrated circular texture and fine, wandering lines create a rhythm of gathering and release. Empty space becomes part of the encounter, giving each gesture room to register.
In Life: Fragility and Resilience, created in 2025, a rounded pale form rests within dark mesh above a richly textured body. Branching wires encircle the sculpture, their fine extensions suggesting both delicacy and tenacity. Sculpting wires, mesh wire sheet, modeling compound, clay, papier-mâché, and a wood plaque come together in a work that allows vulnerability and strength to occupy the same space.
Cradle of Uncertainty: Threads of Survival, created in 2026, introduces a more restless arrangement. Dark, pointed forms cross a pale, rough surface, while slender wires stretch beyond the central structure. The title invites us to consider the possibility of being held even within uncertainty. Its materials—wire mesh, papier-mâché, clay, sculpting compound, wires, and a wood plaque—make that tension tangible.
An Invitation to Look Inward
Across these sculptures, Irina explores the relationships between light and darkness, chaos and order, vulnerability and resilience. The surfaces reward close attention: a loop of wire, a change in texture, the space between two forms. Each detail becomes a way of approaching an experience that remains open to personal interpretation.
There is warmth in that openness. Irina gives viewers room to bring their own memories, questions, and feelings to the work. Through the patient encounter between material and meaning, her sculptures offer a place to reflect on what holds us together as we move through an uncertain world.
Contact the artist: irinahoward.com
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