Ceramics                                                                          Images

 

I make pots for use so I truly think about how they will be used and held and handled. 

When I try to talk about my ceramic work I find it difficult to pin down my voice.  With my paintings I’ve known who I was since my high school years, but with ceramics I didn’t truly develop a passiom until college;  I still sometimes feel I am struggling to find my voice.  In those adolescent years the days my art class worked in clay were my least favorite ones.  Despite my lack of interest my skill level steadily increased.  I felt a kind of kinship with Michelangelo, “the sculptor” forced to paint the Sistine Chapel; I thought of myself as Deborah, “the painter” and wondered why we were wasting time on clay. 

However maybe discovering a passion for ceramics relatively late in my training was a “good thing” because it means my ceramic work is growing, evolving, and changing with me.  Because clay is a relatively new medium for me, it is fresher.  I work and follow inspiration to fruition and then I see the correlation and relationship to the greater body of my work.  I am just beginning to tie in my visual inspirations from the world around me as I do when I paint.  Only now am I coming to clay with a set idea of the finished product while still maintaining the freedom to allow the process to inform the art.   Until now it has been an intuitive process – working until “it looks right” – and then stepping back and discovering its place in my aesthetic.

What inspires me?  Often it is meals.  One such meal occurred on a visit with my uncle who loved to cook for others.  He made a veritable feast for us, but it was the process as much as the product that impressed me.  As he worked, he fed us the best brussels sprouts hunger ever sauced.  As he worked he kept our wine glasses full and tantalized us with tastes of the meal to come by wiping the cheese slices he cut for us along the cutting board where he prepped the bell peppers or along the bottom of the saucepan where he sauteed onions.  When we finally sat at the table he put before us his creations:  Grilled chicken breasts with bell peppers, topped with melted cheese, Mesquite-smoked barbequed pork ribs, Jalapeño spiced black-eyed peas, grilled asparagus, and more wine.  When we had eaten all we could he brought out huge slabs of Mississippi Mud Cake and offered Vanilla Bean ice cream as a topper.  The meal was a work of art and an expression of deep love.  It inspired my first large-scale ceramic series:  dishes for such a feast.

At other times I have been inspired by the needs of someone I love.  My father likes to make a steak and smother it in a can of Ro-tel tomatoes.  This won’t work with paper plates as the meat juices soak through.  On the average commercially produced dinner plates my mother has, the juices run over the edges, especially with vigorous cutting motions.  As a solution I made him steak plates that are masculine, simple, and deep, ideal for his favorite meal.  This meal was usually followed by several soup bowls of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.  But once again he just couldn’t find a vessel deep enough and wide enough to contain all that he desired, but not too much – two soup bowls overfilled the stomach.  Therefore I made an ice cream bowl that fits in his hand, with indentations that make it nestle snuggly against his chest as he relaxes in the recliner and enjoys this treat.  These dishes bring him joy because they fill his need and his beloved daughter made them for him.  He thinks they are beautiful!

Food comes from nature – whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral.  When I try to marry use with beauty, nature is my constant inspiration.  I have made dishes inspired by falling autumn leaves, the bark I observed in the Redwood forests of California, the blossoms of the fruit trees in our yard, the bamboo that sustained my childhood favorite, the great panda, the barbed wire fencing that contained the beef on the hoof, or the lonely look of bare tree branches on a snowy winter day.  Such sights inspire all my work.