Skip to main content

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).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

narrative jewellery: tales from the toolbox book launch

For every piece of jewellery I make there is a story. It can be simple, just a note on the “why?” that led to the forms and textures, or the feeling that I want to remember. Sometimes the single idea that could become a piece, conceived way before the act of making, can become so over-whelming that I need to write a whole new reality for the jewellery to exist within. That’s how it was for “Pull”, the first piece of jewellery in a body of work that became the ReFind Collection *. It caused me to look at materials in my home, especially the things that were routinely thrown away, very differently. It was like waking up to realize I just hadn’t been paying the right kind of attention to all the “stuff” in other areas of my life; realizing that maybe jewellery could be linked to something as obscure as industrial-scale food-processing and packaging—if I allowed my mind to receive the information, differently. I am very honoured that my necklace has been included in Mark Fenn’s new
Post a Comment
Read more

my brand: I am a nerd

His & Hers Nerd Pendants. Sterling silver. 2011. There is no point in denying it: I am a nerd. I designed these pendants for the "Branded" exhibition at the fabulous Influx Gallery in Calgary this summer. I like to bring my background in science and natural history into my art work, and in this case, I also brought some political advocacy. In an era in which some cultures still deny females equal access to education, I used the loaded motif of the apple to create a context to present the writing to the viewer. Here's the full artist statement: His and her “ nerd ” pendants confidently declare affiliation with a tribe that delights in knowledge, education and technology. Nerdism nourishes the world around us, and we are proud of that contribution. His “ nerd ” pendant is about strength in identity. Styled after a traditional branding iron, the pendant is a rugged and substantial piece of silver, designed to perpetuate this important meme beyond one life
2 comments
Read more

Beaux Arts sculptural metal exhibition now open at Il Centro Art Gallery, Vancouver.

The Beaux Arts exhibition, curated by Angela Clarke at Il Centro Art Gallery, Vancouver, was developed with the Vancouver Metal Arts Association . The work of nineteen artists is included, and I am very honoured to be one of them. Huge thanks and kudos to the volunteer members of VMAA who have managed to organize and install a professional show under the current incredibly difficult conditions. To quote from Il Centro’s web-site : As the first exhibition in our Charles Marega 150 celebrations series Il Museo at Il Centro presents Beaux Arts: An Exhibition with the Vancouver Metal Arts Association. This exhibition features the sculptural metal art form both large and small. Entitled Beaux Arts in honour of the artist style of which Charles Marega was an interpreter, this juried show integrates traditional metal work with non-traditional styles and elements, true to the Beaux Arts form. Throughout the exhibition space there is a continuous juxtaposition of traditional and non- traditiona
Post a Comment
Read more