Here are some of my past works. I tried to choose a wide range of some styles that i have tried out in the past.

Ruth's Post

hello everyone,
This is my most recent artist statement. I hope it give a little insite to what I am currently working on, which is different then my pieces I did throughout college. In the past I have uses geometric designs on large areas. Only recently I have simplified a lot by adding this texture and design just to a stripe here and there.

As far back as I can remember appreciating art has always been part of my family. My mother would bring me to museums for what felt like days at a time. Beauty is what attracted me to the art I found on these trips, like Monet, Chagall, and Degas, but I was only allowed to examine them with my eyes. While in high school I began working with clay and was excited when I discovered that there was a way to create artwork that could be held, used and enjoyed, not just looked at. Having developed my skills, I still focus on these qualities creating dinner sets that are removed from the protective china cabinet. My pots reflect the classic patterns and intricate designs of elegant English china or delicate Greek pottery but are also made to endure the stress of a busy household. To heighten the experience of touch, my patterns are created with stamping, faceting and slip trailing to create interesting textures. In creating attractive and functional ceramic ware, I hope to bring art to the table.

Mel December Post (switching with Kip)

hey guys,
this is the version of my artist statement that will be going to grad schools, so any help would be wonderful! here are a few of my latest pots, too. i've been thinking a lot about your comments last time, and have been working on trying to make the animals on different pots interact with one another. i made a bunch of tumblers (different heights) that have a scene across all of them (birds on a wire, pink mountains) but don't have a shot of them. they're moderately successful, a good first step i think. but i've been having trouble finding other ways of making the pots and animals interact without everything seeming contrived. i guess that if i want the animals to be interacting, which would be interesting, i don't want the relationships to be straightforward. maybe the animals could be sort of indifferent or something. also, i think some of the these animals work with their forms, and some could probably be on another pot just as easily. so any suggestions about how to make the animals seem like they really belong on the forms would be helpful. i don't think they look like they're just painted on there for no reason- i do think they somewhat relate to the form- but i'm working on strengthening that aspect. maybe the forms themselves need to change? i'm not interested in making sculptural, bernadette curran pots that directly reflect the shape of the animal, but just want a these pots seem like they were meant to be, to sing. i think they sort of hum now. :)

Artist Statement
Drawing on my faith in the innate intelligence of the motion of making, I allow momentum and intuition to guide my studio practice. My work is a balance between thoughtful intention, action and instinct, with room for daydreams. Confident and lively movements are juxtaposed with affectionate attention to surface pattern and detail. The imagery reflects an ongoing inner dialogue regarding the domestication of life, animals, and land. Characters are whimsical, but sometimes melancholy or forlorn. Animals might be caged or freed by the form, and the surface landscape speaks both of cultivated earth and open horizons. Throughout the entire pot, I seek to balance comfort with adventure, and structure with romance and possibility. Overall, my work is a search for a connection to new and shifting landscapes, as well as an investigation of my own evolving relationship with the natural world.

Juliane's work

Hi everyone.

Hopefully I will be technologically astute and this post will go as it is supposed to. This work is fairly recent; I made it early summer while I was in TN. I am still trying to decipher it. I will include a few excerpts of my artist statement below, but I am really curious about people's reactions to the work WITHOUT reading my statement right away. Are there other visual clues that the work is giving you that aren't evident in my statement? Are there aspects of my work that really seem to mesh/not mesh intuitively with what I write?

My ceramic sculpture consists of a series of multiple ceramic forms that are made with a food reference in mind, be it serving vessels or clay forms that resemble baked goods, candy, dumplings, or pasta. I enjoy the meditative process of throwing or handbuilding the same form over and over. Although it takes a lot of time to create a mass of handmade “food” items out of clay, I am attracted to the nuances and rhythm of these objects as they repeat and begin to energize the space around them. Because my clay food items are made of porcelain and are rather small in size, they remind the viewer of a sweet delicacy or treat. I also find the labor involved in handmade work lends a certain preciousness to each object as no two objects are the same.
Multiples and mass production can refer to consumption. A consumer’s choice in selecting one or several items from a multitude becomes of particular interest to me. How does an individual choose a particular item over others? I consider food, its display, and consumption as a metaphor for human sexuality, taste, and appetite. One might be fortunate to make the right choice in selecting a partner, or one might be tempted to choose based on the appearance of a person only to discover that the inside is a disappointment. In my work, repeated “food” objects signify the multiplicity of choices we have in selecting one from a whole. Repetition of clay forms also alludes to the reproductive nature of our species...

bonjour-

the slides are obviously not top quality but the house is 65% in boxes. these new pots are my attempt to focus on how the handle relates to spout, the spout to the body, the handle to the body etc. i wanted to continue straight lines, bulbous shapes, and quick decision, not cleaning up connection points but leaving them honest and obvious. the large jar (as well as teapots) will have inset lids. the jar is a new idea, simple shape, to be a surface for very dry direct painting.

Mel's Late Summer Post II

Here is a new version of my artist statement, based on writing exercises and megan's super helpful comment.

My current studio work is a response to my search for a connection to a new landscape and environment. In the past, I made pots from local clay and fired mainly with wood and those pots were descriptive of the land from which they came. A rocky Maine coastline, a tangled California mountainside, and a bald North Carolina hill bore natural, earth-toned pots, with deep, yet simple surfaces. Here in central Pennsylvania, the earth in my small, square garden is tinged red. Instead of raw, rough clay dug from the ground, smooth clay with a uniform consistency feels more natural in a town where the commercial has overcome the local and the landscape is less dramatic and wild. I am interested in finding tension between the more austere, rough, physical pots that I have studied in the past and the intimacy of the pinching and line quality I am developing now.

Drawing on my faith in the innate intelligence of the motion of making, I allow momentum and intuition to guide my studio practice. My work is a balance between this action and instinct, with room for daydreams. Confident and lively movements are juxtaposed with affectionate attention to surface pattern and detail. The imagery reflects my current thoughts on the domestication of life, animals, and land. Characters are whimsical, but sometimes sad or lonely. Animals might be caged or freed by the form, and the surface landscape speaks both of cultivated earth and open horizons. Throughout the entire pot, I seek to balance comfort with adventure, structure with romance and possibility.

Mel's Late Summer Post

hey everybody,
hope you’re all enjoying the beginnings of fall! i'm going to post images from the early summer, the pots i made at anderson ranch. (sorry megan- you've seen these already). i don't have any images of what i made at haystack or what i’m doing now, and would like to complete some thoughts before i start putting those pots up. next time. i will say that i'm currently using this same basic decorating method, but with some improvements that come with more practice. i'm also making more complicated forms- pedestalled serving bowls and trays, teapots, and some stranger things too. its all sort of an expansion and variation on the theme you see here.
also, i'm not including a new version of the artist statement. i haven't rewritten it since the last round, but have been doing a lot of writing exercises. here are some of the things that have been recurring, and perhaps those of you who know me well will have something to say about them. i really hope so, anyway. :)
1. why am i driven to paint more domesticated animals, be they chickens or magpies? first of all, the animals themselves contain beautiful and hilarious lines. i enjoy drawing them. but there is something else, something i am really trying to articulate. it has something to do with how people interact with them (in real life, not on the pots), and how we both (humans and these animals) affect one another daily. but there is also something else, something more vague. it involves the confluence of nostalgia and possibility. i spent some time on a farm as a kid, and for some reason everything i came across while i was there really resonated with me. there are specific places and animals there that i often think about. for example, the green, rolling hills lined with white fencing and spotted with sheep used to give me a feeling that, ever since, i have searched for. the image itself is romantic and peaceful, and at the same time it fills me with an urge to run through this never-ending, beautiful landscape, to see what is over the next hill. its as if the romance and nostalgia of the past and the hopeful possibility of the future both exist in one moment. i think the chickens and cows somehow represent that feeling for me. does this make sense to anyone? if so, how can i articulate this? i KNOW its important.
2. gender. i love to make strong pots, and to be strong physically. i move the clay quickly and aggressively, kind of like a man. since i've moved away from the woodfire, i have begun pinching and painting, which feel very delicate and feminine to me. i'm using lavendar and pink. i like the tension between the decoration and the forms, in general. do you?
3. can a pot be both adventurous and comfortable? that is what i want to make.
4. where i am in this moment. the taming of my life and human life in general, as well as animals, and land.
thanks, ladies!

Mel's Late Summer Post

hi megan, monica responding: the first piece left me with not much of a reaction. i liked the way the white cups really stood out agianist the wood fired frame, but not much feeling in it (for me!) the second piece gave me a definite feeling each time i visited your images. I felt like the base acted as an island that the cups where stranded on. the positioning of the cups left me with image of them speaking to each other but across a great distance. (reading to much in?) the third piece had a boat feeling , and the cups where on a voyage. the 4th piece had a brigde look to me. i like the crisscross lines that add some sharpness. I was instantly WOWED by the tiles because of the pillowyness/the look of something trapped air?/something forcing outword movement. I like the housepaint feel of the glaze, but couldn't help but drool over the beautiful wood fired effects of the last two. megan-i tryed to respond to your work beyond just function, form and finish and look at what i saw in your work. Your statement really seemed to speak directly to who you are and what your work and you are searching for.

Megan 9/2007

Artist Statement

I am a journeyer seeking a place that feels like home. I find glimpses in the expanse of the sky, the embrace of a friend and in the structure of geometric form.

My artwork explores concepts of community and mobility. For me, these ideas open a conversation about tension and opposition. The rich possibilities of the open road contrast with the soft comfort of home. Instability creates a desire for order.

The goal of my artwork is to consider the reconciliation of contradictions. My work opens the door to balancing freedom with belonging.

Martina Round Two

I aim to contain in my pots the softness and subtle irregularity that serve to emphasize the handmade object in today’s machine made world.
I’m searching for forms, decoration and glazes that maintain the dynamic crispness that I love while instilling the vitality of the touch of the maker.

In this spirit, I have begun to explore looser thrown forms, less defined decoration and satin glazes to invite the touch. I am learning it is contrary to my nature to allow glazes to run, lines to blur and edges to wobble. It takes me greater concentration to bring an irregular pot into being than a tight one. In my current work I’m enjoying the tension between some of the crisp rims and bases of the pots and the development of the surface.

As I delve deeper into the overlapping of slip and glaze decoration in various colors and surfaces, my ideas continue to evolve. The brightness of opaque green against the shimmer of transparent amber and what they both do differently over a colored slip allows the mind to wander. They evoke the boundary between field and path, or sky and skyline.

Function remains central to my work. I continue to strengthen my forms by consciously repeating elements throughout foot, handle and rim. By creating a piece that is both unique and useful, I hope to remind people of the value and inherent qualities of human touch.