the cracks are how the dark gets out

The Cracks Are How The Dark Gets Out: contemporary porcelain vessel, part of my ongoing Fenestrations series. 2020 was definitely a year when the dark could get stuck inside, and as other recent life experiences have taught me, it is necessary to seize the light.

I haven’t published the Fenestrations series works - yet: I want to develop a show opportunity for them. Somewhere where we can walk through the whiteness, and let the light do the talking, rays and shadows completing the forms. This is a short video introducing a favourite piece from the kiln in 2020. 

No doubt about it, all this isolation is tough on everyone. I’m spending my time making, and learning: making my own studio videos, and doing more self-promotion in a time when there are so few live show opportunities (find me on instagram and twitter @metalisclay). Artist statement follows. Hope you enjoy, and please get in touch to find out more about available work, thanks.

"The Cracks Are How The Dark Gets Out" by Christine Pedersen.
Southern Ice porcelain fired to cone 10 in oxidation.
Ash glaze, clear glaze, stains. 16 cm high, by 20 cm wide. 2020.

From the Fenestration series artist statement:

The openings--fenestrations--are fractures or disruptions in the surface. I create the fenestrations as I pinch, working with their outlines to add punctuation marks to the form, re-directing light, forcing a conversation between inside, and what is left out.

Due to the fairly unorthodox, and fairly forceful, making process I use to develop highly textured--crunchy--porcelain surfaces, other tiny fractures in the clay may appear during the high temperature firings, as the forms shrink and vitrify. Flowing ash glazes will always find and document these--the firing process adding its own bonus features.

I choose to make textured, crunchy surfaces primarily because I love them. Noting how they echo the journey of clay--the destructive interaction of water with rock...the weathering... all those freeze-thaw cycles, erosion, and dispersion...to create degraded rock that we harvest and refine as clay. Which is then permanently, chemically, changed through firing. All this with me knowing that my process may induce what might otherwise be thought of as defects.

Music is "Gold" by Rob Simonsen (copyright free).