Ariana Heinzman is a ceramic-based artist who uses clay to build worlds where things are not quite as they seem.  These worlds are both magical and mundane, and include a colorful menagerie of ceramic sculptures ranging from human to animal, from imaginary to real, from one's inner demons to one's inner Cheshire cats. These sculptures,  stemming from loose drawings, are based on the feeling of glimpsing a shadow when your mind has briefly suspended disbelief.  The forms evoke a sense that they will bend or morph into something else, like a cartoon, the roundness hinting at the breath they hold, an ability to expand and stretch, playfully winking at the living/ non-living binary.  These characters are set against a backdrop of flora, not as mere decoration but as characters themselves. Just as a pattern on a tablecloth or vase imprints itself on our memories, or a tree's silhouette becomes an afterimage on our eyelids, the landscape has a role to play.  The resulting vignettes serve as a resource of images to portray the invisible part of everyday life: daydreams, echoes of memory, thoughts, and the divine. Heinzman uses the plasticity of clay and the limitless nature of drawing to expand her ability to express the intangible aspects of who we are. Inspired by nonsense literature, the work playfully balances absurdity and convention to subvert logic and meaning, not to wallow in life's existential meaninglessness but to romp in the jubilance of existence.