End of an era: Feet of Clay residency ends August 2014

[This artist's statement is prepared for the artist show on August 22-24, 2014.]

Artist’s Statement (mostly accurate)

It seems impossible that a year has passed while being the Feet of Clay Artist-in-Residence. As a result of the generosity and companionship of the community, I have explored sculptural ideas pertaining to the design of ceramics, refined techniques for teaching ceramics processes to others, and documented much of my progress in photos. This exhibition displays some of the highlights of that productive year.

Overall, my design process involves overabundance and austerity at the same time. In the fertile, decadent sense, planning and designing involves a great deal of imagination and overthinking, which results in objects that are somewhat “overloaded” in the sense that they could be simpler and still be effective. More subtly, the pieces are “overloaded” in the sense in that they operate on many levels for me. In the sparse, restricted sense, often the surfaces and forms have been cleaned smooth of construction details and other evidence that handbuilding took place. As with my searching for a balance between color and form, I’m searching for a balance between overabundance and abstraction.

MOLDMAKING: A large part of my time has been spent developing ways to cast abstract ceramic designs in clay based on unusual plaster pouring techniques. In one method, I join together many flat pieces of aluminum to make close-fitting water-tight spaces. When plaster is poured into those spaces and hardens, the resulting plaster pieces can be separated and used in any combination as the mold for ceramic castings. Because the resulting cast pieces come from the same overall set of plaster sections, the finished objects I’m showing have a nice relationship to them. I can’t make up my mind whether I want the cast forms to be brightly colored or a single neutral color. I’ve shown both.

HANDBUILDING: I have also explored the abstracted geometric forms by handbuilding directly with stiff clay slabs using templates. I’m showing work that uses unglazed clay laminates on the surfaces of slab forms. I’m particularly excited to be using the five claybodies in the studio as an active but somewhat neutral color scheme. The laminates are made by stacking clay pieces together into a loaf and then making slices through the stack at different angles to reveal patterns inside.

DECORATING: As people will have noticed, I do like bright colors as well as neutrals. I spent time developing my sense of color and decoration on smooth, expanded thrown forms. I’m trying to find the right balance of calmness form and activity of decoration.

It has been a deep and abiding pleasure to meet and work among the community members here at Feet of Clay. I look forward to more, and to nourishing all the little projects I have going.

Thank you!