MEET THE ARTIST
My love of sculpting can be traced back in my memory to playing with playdough as a child and making realistic recreations of objects such as a miniature blueberry pie with individual tiny blue playdough spheres and a yellow woven lattice top. My favorite recollections of elementary art class projects are when we were able to work with clay. Yes, I do still have those elementary clay sculptures.
My love for design as a visual art form was not formally shaped until I reached college where I entered to major in Interior Design at Meredith College. After taking many art courses as prerequisites to the design courses for my major, I re-discovered my love for building three dimensional forms. I found that I was most comfortable with clay, perhaps because of its forgiving nature of being a material that can be worked as additive and subtractive methods of sculpting.
I have worked along side other ceramic artists who served as mentors by allowing me to explore atmospheric and alternative ceramic firing processes. After realizing that I like to see the evidence of the firing process as part of the surface design of the pieces that I create, I began focusing on primarily on finishing my work by raku firing and wood firing. I am always exploring, and my body of work displays my exploration in the various construction techniques, glazing choices, and firing techniques that I choose to combine in each piece.
MY PROCESS
I sculpt intuitively. This means that I do not typically draw what I am going to sculpt ahead of time.
When creating my pinch pots I start with a general shape in mind such as "short disk-like pot" or "tall cone shaped pot." I start with a one pound solid ball of wet clay and push my thumb into the center of it and pinch the clay (MANY many times.) As I work my way around the pot pinch by pinch I can feel that the clay is starting to have a uniform thickness in each place that I pinch. It is at this point that the ball has transformed into a hollow, rounded-base vessel that is made of approximately one-quarter inch thick clay and has a single opening at the top. I then have a basic pinch pot. A pinch pot is the most primitive ceramic item. It is a simple round form with a simple hold-things function. I can do this portion of my work with my eyes closed. I find this part of my process to be very relaxing.
The final stage of the pinch pot before it is fired is when the contemporary design of the opening is sculpted. When the pot has hardened to a leather-hard stage, I carve angular geometric designs into the surface around the opening. I particularly enjoy how the angles and straight lines of the geometric opening create a juxtaposition with the rounded form of the pinched pot.
My pinch pots are either raku fired or wood fired.
I am not a potter...
I never cared for practicing on the potter's wheel. Here is rare evidence that, at some point, I did practice. My studio is equipped with a wheel and I plan to use it as a tool to expand the sizes of my work to include much larger vessels. This is a note about my continual search to add to the skills that make me an artist who explores and creates, rather than trying to be a production based artist. Potters explore and potters are artists, and some potters are sculptors as well. I am a sculptor.