out of the ashes...

Wendy Stefansson. Out of the Ashes. Slip-cast porcelain, pit fired. 1996

This is a piece about resurrection.

It is a fragment of male torso -- possibly a crucifix -- cast in white porcelain, then fired in a “pit” full of combustibles. It’s the smoke from this process that causes the random and subtle colouration on the surface. I literally lifted it out of the ashes after the fire had died, and found it was in pieces. I glued the pieces back together and assembled them on a board for strength. It was a bit like being an archaeologist, reassembling the fragments of an earlier creation; an earlier being. Like being a god, re-creating it, giving it new life.

spinal column....

Wendy Stefansson. Spinal Column.
Pit-fired white stoneware clay,
wood supports. 1999.

This sculpture is intended to evoke the human spinal column. In it I am playing with ideas about life and death; about permanence and impermanence. On one hand, bones symbolize a belief in resurrection, a belief in spirit, because they outlast the flesh of our bodies. They are as eternal as any part of our corporeal being. And on the other hand, bones represent danger, death and mortality. (Think of the Jolly Roger. Think of the symbol for poison.) Death and life integral to the same totality.

At the same time, in both its form and its construction (the clay “vertebrae” are supported internally by a small tree), this sculpture references the axis mundi: the world tree, the mythical centre of the world, the connection between heaven and earth and the meeting place of the four directions. (T. S. Eliot: “at the still point of the turning world, there the dance is.”) The point at the centre of our being that pins us to the earth; and the upward striving of our erect-walking, god-seeking, whirling dervish species.

Perhaps it even references the cross.

blue....

Yves Klein. 1959

I'm drowning in the deeps, 

floating anchorless in the vast night sky.

(Don't try to rescue me.)

There are some blues a soul can get lost in.

(There are blues that rise like the cry of the cello.

There are blues that fall like the faintness of a breath.)

There is a blue that contains the whole universe.

Isabelle Leclercq, Gousses.

Clockwise from left: Carlos Versluys; Suzanne Altzweig; Steven Heinemann, Residuum.

Erna Aaltonen

Atelier Katsumi

Lost and Found

We lose ourselves in the things we love.

We find ourselves there too.

~Kristin Martz

sewing circles....

Milisa Galazzi. Encaustic.

Michelle Moode. Temporary Arrangement.
Mulberry paper, watercolour, tea, beeswax, stitching, black safety pins. 2009

John Pagliaro. Small Blue. Ceramic and reclaimed lumber.

flight risks

Novie Trump. Out of the Ashes. Ceramic installation.

Wings, the appendages of flight, rendered in clay -- the most earthbound of materials.

Jessica Drenk. Bibliophylum. Carved books, pinned on wall.

Wings, again. Carved from the pages of books. The ultimate flying machine of the human mind.

Louise Richardson. Feathers.

Images of women on tatty old feathers. On quills.

Women have always posed a flight risk.

folds

Jeannine Marchand. Continencia (detail). Folded white clay.

Clay folded like whipped cream

or white icing, 

or the memory of the night 

left in the bed sheets 

in the white light of morning.

Jeannine Marchand. Untitled (detail). Folded white clay.

yearning

Yoko Terai. Ceramic vessels.

These vessels are the opening bars of Beethoven's Für Elise, while the music is simply a sequence of solitary notes -- suspended, longing -- before it tips over into its fullness.

This is the form of yearning holding its breath.

twigs

Ann Linneman. Teapot.

Twigs bring a natural element of randomness, and a rustic-yet-delicate, lyrical quality to works of art.

Sugar spoons. Artist unknown. Twigs and ceramic.

Claudia Lee, from her body of work, The Portals. Handmade paper and twigs.

Mia E Göransson. ceramic

Melanie Ferguson. vessel with twigs

Weaving. Artist Unknown.
Recycled paper, twigs, thread.

between

Giorgio Morandi. Still Life of Vases on a Table. Etching. 1931.

Giorgio Morandi, painter of vessels. Of vases. Of stillness and silence; the settling of dust. Or, as Alistair Sooke puts it, painter of “the dialogue between mute objects, animated by the space between them.” 

(See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/9805870/Giorgio-Morandi-Lines-of-Poetry-Estorick-Collection-review.html.)

Greg Payce. Ebony. Ceramic.

Greg Payce, sculptor of vessels. Vase is hardly the word for them, though they echo the form. They are almost columns: inverse caryatids. Compelling because of the humanness of both scale and form. Face them or turn sideways, slip between them. Fit into the spaces they have animated; the spaces between. 

These objects are anything but mute.

Greg Payce and his Al Barelli. Ceramic. 2001.

Greg Payce. Pantheon. Ceramic. 2004.