Hi beautiful lovely ladies, well here I am in all my glory. Again it was so awesome to meet you all in Pittsburg, I felt like I had made a wonderful connection with you all! So lets see...... The first pots at the top are my newer wood fired series. The teapot and cups are a dry-thrown technique that I learned in Ayumi's workshop last summer at Haystack. I am incorporating a lot of the dry thrown into my work right now; trying to find the balance of organic and refined to go into the wood kiln. I am developing my color palette so eventually I will have a fair amount of color demonstrated.
The Platter is one of my favorites. I am incorporating a lot of birds into my work lately also. I love Bernard slip in the salt because it bleeds and gives a little softness to it all.
I LOVE to make jars. I love to make sets of things. These are a little rough around the edges and the lighting is horrible but a good example of what I am working on. I make a lot of these in cone 6 with runny glazes that come out pretty nice and sell pretty well.
These funny little gourd-shaped jars are my favorite jars to make right now. These are cone 6 with vintage decals. This is a stock shape I make right now and I find they are versatile when decorating.
I make these nesting flowers bowls that I really enjoy. As a potter I really enjoy making my objects fit together well. I feel that I lean towards the vintage style but with a contemporary flair. I am not going to post an artist statement right now because I still pulled in too many directions, part of the reason I thought a formal education was a great idea. I can say for sure that I love pottery with all my heart!
9 comments:
May I be the first to say that I am a huge Fan of Candice's work. I own several pieces of her early pottery. She truly is very gifted! I am very proud of her!
Amanda
the first feeling i got from your work was Beauty.
the flower bowls, the decal jars, the bird plate and the teapot all very beatiful. the set of four jars i really liked the least. the teapot has a very coral feel, an undersea rough beauty. i love that the teapot rim, lid, handle, spout all relate to each other, it has a wonderful overall freshness-right off the wheeel. it appears to have a sizable foot which really gives it nice lift. the bird plate- it has a really "airy" feel. i hope the surface is smooth, the flashing/surface color is great and really works with the design. the four jars, don;t have any lift, they look as if they are going to fall over or slump on the spot. the decal jars- am not sure what to say. they look very commerical. the set of flower bowls- i love that you find it so important that they nest together properly. they are really lovely, but i like to see them a little less generic flower and little more a reflection of what you see as flower. hope this is helpful and school is going great- monica
hello candice, martina here...
so nice to see more of your work. some of the comments i made at NCECA come to mind in looking at this work as well. What i enjoy about the bird plate is the clarity of the decoration that i don't see evident in the tea set or jars. I wonder how the soft forms of teapot and jars would be if not stamped or carved into, but worked with similar brushwork to the platter.
As monica said, the lid and spout are well suited to the treatment of the form, which isn't always easy. However, i wonder if there were elements of crisp sharpness to the rim - not able to clearly see the foot, but wonder if it's trimmed and a different feel from the rest, and if that could come into the rim around the lid.
The exteriors of the pot and teabowls have that quintessential wood-fired quality, and i would love some luscious colour on the insides. In class right now some people are going back with cone 015 enamels or Walter has talked about going back over wood-fired work with 04 glazes to introduce colour. could be interesting. then decals maybe?
I enjoy the unity of your sets, and fully understand your enjoyment in making things that relate, or fit inside. I would encourage you to take it further - experiment with some different lids (monica is my inspiration there) and on the flower bowls what about pushing the altering to actually cut and reshape the petals (see Joan Brunneau: http://www.joanbruneau.com/bowls_plates.html)
your love of the material is evident in the way you manipulate the clay, but this is a little lost in the decalled jars. some of the freedom (is it the dry throwing difference?) of the other pieces is lost. Perhaps that's a way for you to distinguish the two bodies of work?
I feel like i've jumped around alot and hope some of the comments are constructive. I'm excited for you and I see great commitment in this work and also lots of room for exploration. Sometimes i get so stuck on the finite technical aspects of my pots i lose sight of the play, and your work has a great expressive quality, i can't wait to see what more colour does.
all the best, Martina
Hello Candice,
Juliane here.
Nice to see more of your work - a lot of variety! It seems that some of your pots have a natural, subdued feel (wood/salt work) while other forms feel more controlled and are more obvious/conventional with regards to their decoration (set of flower plates and cone 6 jars). Do you feel drawn more towards one body of work than another? It might be interesting to see how the set of 4 jars translate when you fire them at cone 6 with brighter colors...
I feel that the 4 jars could benefit from the addition of lugs at the top of the piece to enliven some of that negative space. What about the addition of some feet? The set has a lot of character! The forms are kind of lumpy from the stamping and tip slightly at an angle. They are nice pieces, but I do feel that the addition of some kind of handle would carry them to the next level.
I enjoy your bird platter; it has a softer feel. Have you thought about adding more of a lip to the rim of the plate to frame the bird? I see the form more as a plate than as a platter, but I also have no idea of the scale.
I get a nice sense of movement and ease with the wood/salt pieces. The stamps allow for that feel in creating the undulating surface as do the smooth flow of brush marks on your platter. Sometimes I feel that the scale of the stamp used and the number of impressions you make with the stamp distract from the viewer from the form underneath. You have a good understanding of form and proportion. It would be interesting to try Martina's suggestion and let the surface be mark free on a couple of pieces (or experiment with how you go about stamping your work).
I actully like the cone 6 jars! The feet are great and so is the little swirl on top. I feel that the set of flower plates are the most stiff , maybe because you worked from stiffer slabs over a mold?
Thanks for sharing your work! It was nice to meet you in PA.
aaahhhh candice,
where ARE you going to go with all this? wouldn't it be amazing to look into the future sometimes? i know you often feel pulled in a lot of directions, and of course we can see that in your work. in my opinion, no particular piece or group of pieces is decidedly stronger than the others, which is not at all helpful. i love the strong character, honesty, and beauty of your work.
as for constructive criticism- the first thing that comes to mind is something juliane also said. the jars could use some lugs or something near the top to make them less bottom heavy and to enliven their silhouette. your jars (of all kinds) really remind me of the body with all of its lumps and bumps and funny places. so maybe the lugs could even go right where the rounded part begins to straighten up... i don't know. something to experiment with, anyway.
as for the decal jars, my immediate and instinctual reaction is that they would sell well but aren't as heartfelt. perhaps that's simply because they're shiny and more plastic/manufactured looking than the rest of your work, and perhaps i wouldnt' say that if i saw them in real life. i like a lot of what you do with decals, but not so much here.
again, i'd echo others and ask you how you could maybe combine your woodfired surface treatment (which seems to work so beautifully with the dry throwing, carving, and stamping) with the decals and brightly colored glazes. as martina suggested, an obvious place to provide contrast and variety is from the inside to the outside, but i wonder if you could maybe just keep some areas smooth in the woodfire, and then go back and decorate them with color somehow later. circles? sections? i dont' know. but i can say that the woodfired surfaces seem so elemental and straight from your heart, and it seems like the problem is how to combine that part of you with the other, colorful, bright part that wants and needs to join the party.
i love the bird. but he seems naked or simply unfinished. what if he flew in a bright yellow sky? and there were decals? maybe that's not AT ALL what you're going for, but who knows. just an idea.
hope that helps a little!!!
lovemel
hello candice, of all your work posted my two favorite are the teapot and the bird platter. All your is beautiful but these seem to be the most expressive or visually satisfying to me. I love the teapot and your stamping works very well to create a texture more then a decoration. I am a stamper but my stamping usually becomes the decoration and organization of the pot. I enjoyed the texture in person on your small jar at nceca and can see how that same quality would be well received on this teapot as well. Your bird echoes this same free expression but is the opposite way of surface treatment. This piece is more airy but equally beautiful. thanks for sharing your work and i look forward to seeing where all these ideas go to next. I dont have any new ideas of what to do to improve but all the advice everyone else has offered looks like more then enough to keep you busy.
Hi Candice!
I hope you have found all this input helpful! To add my two cents:
You do have quite a diversity of work. Although I know that selling work is important, I would encourage you not to let that guide you too much, and focus on making the work that speaks to you with the most passion. I think that over time, following that thread will lead to success, even if initially it is not well received.
One element I see in all of your pieces is that you decorate them uniformly -- the decoration is the same across the piece. With the jars and the teapot, I find the surface to be a bit murky and that the glaze and the stamping don't work that well together. I wonder what would happen if you divided your pots in some way, so that parts are stamped and parts more open. I think this might create more visual interest. Also, with the teapot and jars, which are rather active, it would create a place of quiet, and contrast with the other surface. With the decal jars and the bowls, the decoration is more predictable and easier to read; with these I wonder about adding something that is more difficult to look at, or less shiny. I like the shape of the decal jars a lot - but are they practical for containing much, with such a short bottom?
OK, I hope your work is going well since your posting. I look forward to the next one from you!
-Megan
Hi Candice - It is great to see some of you work! There are a number of things that you are doing really well, but I can see why you are so drawn to the bird plate. I love the loose line quality of your drawing and the way the glaze left a light halo around the bird and in the clouds. I really enjoy the teapot at the top too. You created a uniformity of surface that is really pleasing – all of the components seem like they belong together. It teeters on busy, but I think your choice of a single glaze that picks up the texture keeps it visually manageable. I also think your choice of photographing the smooth interior of one of the cups was a smart one – that is a welcome area of calm and makes the cups very inviting for use.
The other shape I’m quite drawn to is the gourd form. Do you ever make these pots nest together? I can’t help but think of my set of wooden Russian nesting dolls I had when I was a kid when I look at these forms. Being that I have always been drawn to bright colors, so these immediately jumped out at me. I could envision you inverting the lid to the top 1/3 of the jar and these making a unique canister set. Have you ever tried using the decals on some of your wood fired work? That could be another way to explore your vintage-contemporary style.
I totally understand what you mean about being pulled in a lot of different directions. There are just so many things to try!! And learning to use these techniques takes time and energy. I would say that you should continue to play and experiment. As your work continues to develop you will see what sticks and what doesn’t. I don’t know how everyone else feels, but I think it seems perfectly reasonable to have a cone 6 line of work and a wood fired line. Ideally there would be some level of continuity, but given that they are such different firing environments it makes total sense that the pots would need to be different as well.
It was so much fun to have you out in Pittsburgh – you will have to come visit in Minneapolis!
--Kip
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